LB 675 
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Copy 2 



THE 



Philosophy 



OF 



EDUCATION; 



OR. 



"PEDAGOGICS AS A SYSTEM. 



By Dr. KARL ROSENKRANZ, 
Professor of Philoso^phy in the University of Kdni^sben 



igsberg. 



TKANSLATED FROM THE GEKMAN 

By ANNA C. BRACKETT 



GRAY, BAKER & CO 

-ST. LOUIS, MO. 
1873. 



% 



. ^ 



The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 



Contents of No. 1. 

I. To the Reader. 
II. The Speculative. 

III. Herbert Spencer, 

IV. Introduction toFichte's Science 

of Knowledge. 
V. B^nard's Essay on Hegel's -Es- 
thetics. 
VI. Raphael's Transfiguration. 
VH. Introduction to Philosophy. 
Vm. Seed Life. 
IX. Schopenhauer on. Immortality. 
X. Goetho'- Theory of Colors. 



Contents of No. 2. 

I. Second Part of Goethe's Faust. 
II. Fichte's "Criticism of Philoso- 
phical Systems.'' 
III. Notes on Milton's Lycidas. 
rV. Hegel's Pliilosophy of Art. 
V. Introduction to Philosophy. 
VI. Music as a Form of Art. 
VTl. The Alchemists. 
Vlil. Editorials. 



Contents of No. 3. 
I. Translation of Leibnitz's Monad- 

ology . 
II. Fichte's "Criticism of Philoso- 
phical Systems." 

III. Schelling's ''Introduction to Ide- 

alism." 

IV. Genesis. 

V. Hegel's Philosophy of Art. 
VI. The Metaphysics of Materialism. 
VII. Letters on Faust. 
VIII. Introduction to Philosophy. 
IX. The Philosophy of Baader. 
X. In the Quarry. 



Contents of No. 4. 
Schelling's Introduction to the 

Philosophy of Nature. 
Kegels Philosophy of Art — 

Sculpture. 
Dialogue on Music. 
Schopenhauer's Doctrine of the 
Will. 

V. Introduction to Philosophy. 
VI. A Thought on Shakespeare. 
VII. Goethe's Essay on Da Vinci'S 

'•Last Supper." 
VTII. Paul Janet and Hegel. 



II. 

HL 
IV. 



CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. 



I. 
II. 
HL 

IV. 

V. 

VI, 

VH, 

VIU. 

IX, 
X. 

XI, 



Contents of No. 1. 

Statement of the Problem. 

Fichte's "Sun-clear Statement." 

Swedenborg and Speculative Phi- 
losophy. 

Beethoven's Sevoiiti. Symphony. 

Hegel's ^Esthetics— Painting. 

Pantheon. 

Introduction to Philosophy. 

The DitFerence of Baader from 
llegel . 

Nopiiiialism vs. Realism. 

Leibnitz on the Nature of the 

Soul- 
Book Notices. 



Contents of No. 2. 
I. Fichte's " Sun-clear Statement." 

II. Cousin's Doctrine of Uie Abso- 

lute. 

III. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spir- 

it (translatea; , 
rV. Analysis of Hege.'s i'henomen- 

ology . 
V. Questions concerning certain Fa- 
culties claimed for Man. 
VI. Letters on Faust (second series) . 
VII. Goethe's Social Romances. 
VHI. Comorehension. 



I. 
11. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VH. 

VHI. 

IX. 

X. 

XL 

XII. 



C<^)NTENTS OF No. 3. 

Fichte's " Sun-clear Statement." 

Some Consequences of Four In- 
capacities. 

Hegel's Philosophy of Art — Mu- 
sic. 

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spir- 
it (translated). 

New School of Music. 

Introduction to Philosophy. 

Analysis of Hegel's Phenomen- 
ology . 

Winckelmann's Remarks on the 
Torso of Hercules. 

The Ideal. 

What is Meant by " Determined." 

Intuition vs. Contemplation. 

Book Notices. 



Contents of No. 4. 
I. The Validity of the Laws of Lo- 
gic. 
II. Goethe's and Winckelmann's Re- 
marks on the Lr.^koon . 

III. Goei .'s Social Romances. 

IV. Sankhya Kariha (ofKapila). 

V. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spir- 
it (translated). 
VI. Beethoven's Sinfonia Er6ica. 
VH. Correspondence. 



/ 



LB 675 
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PEDAGOGICS 



AS A 



SYSTEM. 



By Dr. KARL ROSENKRANZ, 

Doctor of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at the Univer- 
sity of Konigsberg. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 



By ANNA C, BRACKETT. 



{Beprinted from Journal of Speculative Philosophy.') 



ST. LOUIS, MO.: 

THE R. P. STUDLEY COMPANY, PRINTERS, CORNER MAIN & OLIVE STS. 

18 7 2. 



^ 



.T?7 A2 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S72, by 

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



/• 



ANALYSIS. 



^ 

V 



'ill its General 
Idea 



Part I. 



in its Special 
Elements 

PART II. 



(^ 



^ 



• v 



Education 



fits Nature 
\ its Form 
t its Limits 

f Physical 

I 
■{ Intellectual 

I 

L Moral 



in its Pailicular 
Sj'Stems 

Part III. 



Theocratic 



Human ita- 
riau 



Passive 



National Active 



Individual 



["Monkish 
Chivalric 



f Family . . 

Caste . . 

L Monkish . 

Military , 

Priestly . 
Industrial 

^Esthetic , 

Practical . 



China. 

India. 

Thibet. 

Persia. 

Egypt. 

Phfjenicia. 

Greece. 

Eome. 



Abstract Indi- \ Xoilhern 
vidual } Barbarians. 



' for Special 
Callings 



.for Civil Life' 



, Jews. 

r Jesuitic. 
( Pietistic. 

("The Huma- 
nities, 
to achieve an! 
Ideal of Culture! The Philau- 
throi^ic 
I Movem't. 

. for Free Citizenship. 



/ 




PEDAGOGICS AS A SYSTEM. 



[Inquiries from teachers in different sections of the country as to the sources 
of information on tlie subject of Teaching as a Science have led me to believe 
that a translation of Rosenkranz's Pedagogics may be widely acceptable and 
useful. It is very cei'tain that too much of our teaching is simply empirical, 
and as Germany has, more than any other country, endeavored to found it 
upon universal truths, it is to that country that we must at present look for 
a remedy for this empiricism. 

Based as this is upon the profoundest system of German Philosophy, no more 
suggestive treatise on Education can perhaps be found. In his third part, as 
will be readily seen, Rosenkranz follows the olassification of National ideas 
given in Hegel's Philosophy of History. The word " Pedagogics," though it 
has unfortunately acquired a somewhat unpleasant meaning in English — 
thanks to the writers who have made the word "pedagogue" so odious — 
deserves to be redeemed for future use. I have, therefore, retained it in the 
translation. 

In order that the reader may see the general scope of the work , I append in 
tabular form the table of contents, giving however, under the first and second 
parts, only the main divisions. The minor heads can, of course, as they 
appear in the translation, be easily located. — Tr.'] 



INTRODUCTION. 

§ 1. The science of Pedagogics cannot be derived from a 
simple principle with such exactness as Logic and Ethics. It 
is rather a mixed science which has its presuppositions in 
many others. In this respect it resembles Medicine, with 
which it has this also in common, that it must make a dis- 
tinction between a sound and an unhealthy system of educa- 
tion, and must devise means to prevent or to cure the latter. 
It may therefore have, like Medicine, the three departments 
of Physiology, Pathology, and Therapeutics. 

§ 2. Since Pedagogics is capable of no such exact defini- 
tions of its principle and no such logical deduction as other 
sciences, the treatises written upon it abound more in shallow- 
ness than any other literature. Short-sightedness and arro- 
gance find ill it a most congenial atmosphere, and criticism 



6 Pedagogics as a System. 

and declamatory "bombast flourisli in perfection as nowhere 
else. The literature of religions tracts might be considered to 
rival that of Pedagogics in its superficiality and assurance, 
if it did not for the most part seem itself to belong, through 
its ascetic nature, to Pedagogics. But teachers as persons 
should be treated in their weaknesses and failures with the 
utmost consideration, because they are most of them sincere 
in contributing their mite, for the improvement of education, 
and all their pedagogic practice inclines them towards admin- 
istering reproof and giving advice. 

§ B. The charlatanism of educational literature is also fos- 
tered by the fact that teaching has become one of the most 
profitable employments, and the competition in it tends to 
increase self-glorification. 

— When "Boz" in his "Nicholas Nickleby" exposed the 
horrible mysteries of an English boarding - school, many 
teachers of such schools were, as he assures us, so accurately 
described that they openly complained he had aimed his 
caricatures directly at them. — 

§ 4. In the system of the sciences. Pedagogics belongs to 
the Philosophy of Spirit, — and in this, to the department of 
Practical Philosophy, the problem of which is the compre- 
hension of the necessity of freedom ; for education is the con- 
scious working of one will on another so as to produce itself 
in it according to a determinate aim. The idea of subjective 
spirit, as well as that of Art, Science, and Religion, forms 
the essential condition. for Pedagogics, but does not contain 
its principle. If one thinks out a complete statement of Prac- 
tical Philosophy (Ethics), Pedagogics may be distributed 
among all its grades. But the point at which Pedagogics itself 
becomes organic is the idea of the Family, because in the 
family the difference between the adults and the minors en- 
ters directly through the naturalness of spirit, and the right 
of the children to an education and the duty of parents 
towards them in this respect is incontestable. All other 
spheres of education, in order to succeed, must presuppose a 
true family life. They may extend and complement the busi- 
ness of teaching, but cannot be its original foundation. 

— In our systematic exposition of Education, we must not 
allow ourselves to be led into error by those theories which 



Pedagogics as a System. 7 

do not recognize the family, and wliicli limit tlie relation of 
husband and wife to the producing of children. The Platonic 
Philosophy is the most worthy representative of this class. 
Later writers who take great pleasure in seeing the world 
full of children, but who would subtract from the love to a 
wife all truth and from that to children all care, exhibit in 
their doctrine of the anarchy of love only a sickly (but yet 
how prevalent an) imitation of the Platonic state. — 

§ 5. Much confusion also arises from the fact that many do 
not clearly enough draw the distinction between Pedagogics 
as a science and Pedagogics as an art. As a science it busies 
itself with developing a priori the idea of Education in the 
universality and necessity of that idea, but as an art it is the 
concrete individualizing of this abstract idea in any given 
case. And in any such given case, the peculiarities of the 
person who is to be educated and all the previousl}^ existing 
circumstances necessitate a modification of the universal aims 
and ends, which modification cannot be provided for before- 
hand, but must rather test the ready tact of the educator who 
knows how to make the existing conditions fulfil his desired 
end. It is exactly in doing this that the educator may show 
himself inventive and creative, and that pedagogic talent can 
distinguish itself. The word "art" is here used in the same 
way as it is used when we say, the art of war, the art of gov- 
ernment, &c. ; and rightly, for we are talking about the 
possibility of the realization of the idea. 

— The educator must adapt himself to the pupil, but not to 
such a degree as to imply that the pupil is incapable of change, 
and he must also be sure that the pupil shall learn through his 
experience the independence of the object studied, which re- 
mains uninfluenced by his variable personal moods, and the 
adaptation on the teacher's part must never compromise this 
independence. — 

§ 6. If conditions which are local, temijoral, and individual, 
are fixed as constant rules, and carried beyond their proper 
limits, are sj^stematized as a valuable formalistic code, una- 
voidable error arises. The formulae of teaching are admirable 
material for the science, but are not the science itself. 

§ 7. Pedagogics as a science must (1) unfold the general 
idea of Education ; (2) must exhibit the particular phases into 



8 Pedagogics as a System. 

which the general work of Education divides itself, and (3) 
must describe the particular standpoint upon which the gen- 
eral idea realizes itself, or should become real in its special 
processes at any particular time. 

§ 8. The treatment of the first part offers no difficulty. It 
is logically too evident. But it would not do to substitute for 
it the history of Pedagogics, simply because all the concep- 
tions of it which appear in systematic treatises can be found 
there. 

— Into this error G. Thaulow has fallen in his pamphlet on 
Pedagogics as a Philosophical Science. — 

§ 9. The second division unfolds the subject of the physi- 
cal, intellectual and practical culture of the human race, and 
constitutes the main part of all books on Pedagogy. Here 
arises the greatest difficulty as to the limitations, partly be- 
cause of the undefined nature of the ideas, partly because of 
the degree of amplification which the details demand. Here 
is the field of the widest possible differences. If e.g. one 
studies out the conception of the school with reference to the 
qualitative specialities which one may consider, it is evident 
that he can extend his remarks indefinitely ; he may speak 
thus of technological schools of all kinds, to teach mining, 
navigation, war, art, &c. 

§ 10. The third division distinguishes between the different 
standpoints which are possible in the working out of the con- 
ception of Education in its special elements, and which there- 
fore produce different systems of Education wherein the gen- 
eral and the particular are individualized in a special manner. 
In every system the general tendencies of the idea of educa- 
tion, and the difference between the physical, intellectual and 
practical culture of man, must be formally recognized, and 
will appear. The How is decided by the standpoint which 
reduces that formalism to a special system. Thus it becomes 
possible to discover the essential contents of the history of 
Pedagogics from its idea, since this can furnish not an in- 
definite but a certain number of Pedagogic systems. 

— The lower standpoint merges always into the higher, and in 
so doing first attains its full meaning, e.g. : Education for the 
sake of the nation is set aside for higher standpoints, e.g. 
that of Christianity ; but we must not suppose that the na- 



Pedagogics as a System. 9 

tional phase of Education was counted as nought from the 
Christian standpoint. Rather it itself had outgrown the limits 
which, though suitable enough for its early stage, could no 
longer contain its true idea. This is sure to be the case in 
the fact that the national individualities become indestructi- 
ble by being incorporated into Christianity — a fact that con- 
tradicts the abstract seizing of such relations. — 

§ 11. The last system must be that of the present, and since 
this is certainly on one side the result of all the past, while 
on the other seized in its possibilities it is determined by the 
Future, the business of Pedagogics cannot pause till it reaches 
its ideal of the general and special determinations, so that 
looked at in this way the Science of Pedagogics at its end 
returns to its beginning. The first and second divisions al- 
ready contain the idea of the system necessary for the Present. 



FIRST PART. 
The General Idea of Education. 

§ 12. The idea of Pedagogics in general must distinguish, 

(1) The nature of Education in general ; 

(2) Its form ; 

(3) Its limits. 

I. 

The Nature of Education. 

§ 13. The nature of Education is determined by the nature 
of mind — that it can develop whatever it really is only by its 
own activity. Mind is in itself free ; but if it does not actual- 
ize this possibility, it is in no true sense free, either for itself 
or for another. Education is the influencing of man by man, 
and it has for its end to lead him to actualize himself through 
his own efforts. The attainment of perfect manhood as the 
actualization of the Freedom necessary to mind constitutes 
the nature o£ Education in general. 

— The completely isolated man does not become man. Soli- 
tary human beings who have been found in forests, like the 
wild girl of the forest of Ardennes, sufficiently prove the fact 
that the truly human qualities in man cannot be developed 
without reciprocal action with human beings. Caspar Hau- 
ser in his subterranean prison is an illustration of what man 



10 Pedagogics as a System. 

would be by himself. The first cry of the child expresses in 
its appeals to others this helplessness of spirituality on the 
side of nature. — 

§ 14. Man, therefore, is the only fit subject for education. 
We often speak, it is true, of the education of plants and 
animals ; but even when we do so, we apply, unconsciously 
perhaps, other expressions, as "raising" and "training," in or- 
der to distinguish these. "Breaking" consists in producing in 
an animal, either by pain or pleasure of the senses, an activ- 
ity of which, it is true, he is capable, but which he never 
would have developed if left to himself. On the other hand, 
it is the nature of Education only to assist in the producing 
of that which the subject would strive most earnestly to de- 
velop for himself if he had a clear idea of himself. We speak 
of raising trees and animals, but not of raising men ; and it 
is only a planter who looks to his slaves only for an increase 
in their number. 

—The education of men is quite often enough, unfortunate- 
ly, only a " breaking," and here and there still may be found 
examples where one tries to teach mechanically, not through 
the understanding power of the creative word, but through 
the powerless and fruitless appeal to physical pain.— 

§ 15. The idea of Education may be more or less compre- 
hensive. We use it in the widest sense when we speak of 
the Education of the race, for we understand by this expres- 
sion the connection which the acts and situations of differ- 
ent nations have to each other, as different steps towards 
self-conscious freedom. In this the world-spirit is the teacher. 

§ 16. In a more restricted sense we mean by Education the 
.shaping of the individual life by the forces of nature, the 
rhythmical movement of national customs, and the might of 
destiny in which each one finds limits set to his arbitrary will. 
These often mould him into a man without his knowledge. 
Por he cannot act in opposition to nature, nor offend the ethi- 
cal sense of the people among whom he dwells, nor despise 
the leading of destiny without discovering through experience 
that before the Nemesis of these substantial elements his 
subjective power can dash itself only to be shattered. If he 
perversely and persistently rejects all our admonitions, we 
leave him, as a last resort, to destiny, whose iron rule must 



Pedagogics as a System. 11 

educate Mm, and reveal to Mm the God whom he has misun- 
derstood. 

— It is, of course, sometimes not ovlj XDOssible, but necessary 
for one, moved by the highest sense of morality, to act in op- 
position to the laws of nature, to offend the ethical sense of 
the people that surround him, and to brave the blows of des- 
tiny ; but such a one is a sublime reformer or martyr, and we 
are not now speaking of such, but of the perverse, the frivo- 
lous, and the conceited. — 

§ 17. In the narrowest sense, which however is the usual one, 
we mean by Education the influence which one mind exerts on 
another in order to cultivate the latter in some understood and 
meth.);. -il way, either generally or with reference to some 
special aim. The educator must, therefore, be relatively 
finished in his own education, and. the pupil must possess 
unlimited confidence in him. If authority be wanting on the 
one side, or respect and obedience on the other, this ethical 
basis of development must fail, and it demands in the very 
highest degree, talent, knowledge, skill, and prudence. 

— Education takes on this form only under the culture which 
has been developed through the influence of city life. Up to 
that time we have the naive period of education, which holds 
to the general powers of nature, of national customs, and of 
destiny, and which lasts for a long time among the rural 
populations. But in the city a greater complication of events, 
an uncertaint}^ of the results of reflection, a working out of 
individuality, and a need of the possession of many arts 
and trades, make their appearance and render it impossible 
for men longer to be ruled by mere custom. The Telemachus 
of Fenelon was educated to rule himself by means of reflec- 
tion ; the actual Telemachus in the heroic age lived simply 
according to custom. — 

§ 18. The general problem of Education is the development 
of the theoretical and practical reason in the individual. If 
we say that to educate one means to fashion him into morality, 
we do not make our definition sufficiently comprehensive, be- 
cause we say nothing of intelligence, and thus confound edu- 
cation and ethics. A man is not merely a human being, but 
as a reasonable being he is a peculiar individual, and difi'er- 
ent from all others of the race. 



13 Pedagogics as a System. 

§ 19. Education mnst lead the pupil by an interconnected 
series of efforts previously foreseen and arranged by the 
teacher to a definite end ; but the particular form which this 
shall take must be determined by the peculiar character of 
the pupil's mind and the situation in which he is found. 
Hasty and inconsiderate work may accomplish much, but only 
systematic work can advance and fashion him in conformity 
with his nature, and the former does not belong to education, 
for this includes in itself the idea of an end, and that of the 
technical means for its attainment. 

§ 20. But as culture comes to mean more and more, there 
becomes necessary a division of the business of teaching 
among different persons, with reference to capabilities and 
knowledge, because as the arts and sciences are continually 
increasing in number, one can become learned in any one 
branch only by devoting himself exclusively to it, and hence 
becoming one-sided. A difficulty hence arises which is also 
one for the pupil, of preserving, in spite of this unavoidable 
one-sidedness, the unity and wholeness which are necessary 
to humanity. 

— The naive dignity of the happy savage, and the agreea- 
ble simplicity of country people, appear to very great advan- 
tage when contrasted on this side with the often unlimited 
narrowness of a special trade, and the endless curtailing of 
the wholeness of man by the pruning processes of city life. 
Thus the often abused savage has his hut, his family, his 
cocoa tree, his weapons, his passions ; he fishes, hunts, plays, 
fights, adorns himself, and enjoys the consciousness that he 
^ is the centre of a whole, while a modern citizen is often only 
an abstract expression of culture. — 

§ 21. As it becomes necessary to divide the work of teach- 
ing, a difference between general and special schools arises 
also, from the needs of growing culture. The former present 
in different compass all the sciences and arts which are in- 
cluded in the term "general educatioii," and which were 
classified by the Greeks under the general name of Encyclo- 
pjBdia. The latter are known as special schools, suited to 
particular needs or talents. 

— As those who live in the country are relatively isolated, 
it is often necessary, or at least desirable, that one man should 



Pedagogics as a System. 13 

'he trained equally on many different sides. The poor tutor 
is required not only to instruct in all the sciences, he must 
also speak French and be able to play the piano. — 

§ 22. For any single person, the relation of his actual edu- 
cation to its infinite possibilities can only be approximately 
determined, and it can be considered as only relatively fin- 
ished on any one side. Education is impossible to him who 
is born an idiot, since the want of the power of generalizing 
and of ideality of conscious personality leaves to such an un- 
fortunate only the possibility of a mechanical training. 

— Sagert, the teacher of the deaf mutes in Berlin, has made 
laudable eftbrts to educate idiots, but the account as given in 
his publication, " Cure of Idiots by an Intellectual Method, 
Berlin, 1846," shows that the result obtained was only exter- 
nal ; and though we do not desire to be understood as deny- 
ing or refusing to this class the possession of a mind in po- 
tentia, it appears in them to be confined to an embryonic 

state. — 

II. 

The Form of Education. 

§ 23. The general form of Education is determined by the 
mature of the mind, that it really is nothing but what it makes 
itself to be. The mind is (1) immediate (or potential), but (2) 
it must estrange itself from itself as it were, so that it may 
place itself over against itself as a special object of attention ; 
(3) this estrangement is finally removed through a further ac- 
quaintance with the object — it feels itself at home in that on 
which it looks, and returns again enriched to the form of im- 
mediateness. That which at first apjoeared to be another than 
itself is now seen to be itself. Education cannot create ; it 
can only help to develop to reality the previously existent 
possibility ; it can only help to bring forth to light the hid- 
den life. 

§ 24. All culture, whatever may be its special purport, must 
pass through these two stages — of estrangement, and its remo- 
val. Culture must hold fast to the distinction between the 
subject and the object considered immediately, though it has 
again to absorb this distinction into itself, in order that the 
union of the two may be more complete and lasting. The 
subject recognizes then all the more certainly that what at 



14 Pedagogics as a System. 

first appeared to it as a foreign existence, belongs to it as its 
own property, and that it holds it as its own all the more by 
means of culture. 

— Plato, as is known, calls the feeling with which knowl- 
edge must begin, wonder ; but this can serve as a beginning 
only, for wonder itself can only express the tension between 
the subject and the object at their first encounter — a tension 
which would be impossible if they were not in themselves 
identical. Children have a longing for the far-off, the strange, 
and the wonderful, as if they hoped to find in these an expla- 
nation of themselves. They want the object to be a genuine 
object. That to which they are accustomed, which they see 
around them every day, seems to have no longer any objec- 
tive energy for them ; but an alarm of fire, banditti life, wild 
animals, gray old ruins, the robin's songs, and far-off happy 
islands, &c. — everj'thing high-colored and dazzling — leads 
them irresistibly on. The necessity of the mind's making 
itself foreign to itself is that which makes children prefer to 
hear of the adventurous journeys of Sinbad than news of 
their own city or the history of their nation, and in youth 
this same necessity manifests itself in their desire of trav- 
elling. — 

§ 25. This activity of the mind in allowing itself to be 
absorbed, and consciously so, in an object with the purpose of 
making it his own, or of producing it, is WorTc. But when the 
mind gives itself up to its objects as chance may present 
them or through arbitrariness, careless as to whether they 
have any result, such activity is Play. Work is laid out for 
the pupil by his teacher by authority, but in his play he is 
left to himself. 

§ 26. Thus work and play must be sharply distinguished 
from each other. If one has not respect for work as an im- 
portant and substantial activity, he not only spoils play for 
his pupil, for this loses all its charm when deprived of the 
antithesis of an earnest, set task, but he undermines his re- 
spect for real existence. On the other hand, if he does not 
give him space, time, and opportunity, for play, he prevents 
the peculiarities of his pupil from developing freely through 
the exercise of his creative ingenuity. Play sends the pupil 
back refreshed to his work, since in play he forgets himself 



Pedagogics as a System. 15 

in his own way, while in work he is required to forget him- 
self in a manner prescribed for him by another. 

— Play is of great importance in helping one to discover 
the true individualities of children , because in play they may 
betray thoughtlessly their inclinations. This antithesis of 
work and play runs through the entire life. Children anti- 
cipate in their play the earnest work of after life ; thus the 
little girl plays with her doll, and the boy pretends he is a 
soldier and in battle. — 

§ 27. Work should never be treated as if it were play, nor 
play as if it were work. In general, the arts, the sciences, and 
productions, stand in this relation to each other : the accu- 
mulation of stores of knowledge is the recreation of the mind 
which is engaged in independent creation, and the practice 
of arts fills the same office to those whose work is to collect 
knowledge. 

§ 28. Education seeks to transform every particular condi- 
tion so that it shall no longer seem strange to the mind or in 
anywise foreign to its own nature. This identity of conscious- 
ness, and the special character of anything done or endured 
by it, we call Habit [habitual conduct or behavior]. It con- 
ditions formally all progress ; for that which is not yet be- 
come habit, but which we perform with design and an exer- 
cise of our will, is not yet a part of ourselves. 

§ 29. As to Habit, we have to say next that it is at first 
indifi'erent as to what it relates. But that which is to be 
considered as indifterent or neutral cannot be defined in the 
abstract, but only in the concrete, because anything that is 
indifferent as to whether it shall act on these particular men, 
or in this special situation, is capable oi another or even 
of the opposite meaning for another man or men for the same 
men or in other circumstances. Here, then, appeal must be 
made to the individual conscience in order to be able from 
the depths of individuality to separate what we can permit 
to ourselves from that which we must deny ourselves. The 
aim of Education must be to arouse in the pupil this spir- 
itual and ethical sensitiveness which does not recognize any- 
thing as merely indifferent, but rather knows how to seize in 
everything, even in the seemingly small, its universal hu- 
man significance. But in relation to the highest problems he 



16 Pedagogics as a System. 

must learn that what concerns his own immediate personality 
is entirely indifferent. 

§ 30. Habit lays aside its indifference to an external action 
through reflection on the advantage or disadvantage of the 
same. Whatever tends as a harmonious means to the reali- 
zation of an end is advantageous, but that is disadvantageous 
which, by contradicting its idea, hinders or destroys it. Ad- 
vantage and disadvantage being then only relaiitie terms, a 
habit which is advantageous for one man in one case may be 
disadvantageous for another man, or even for the same man, 
under different circumstances. Education must, therefore, 
accustom the youth to judge as to the expediency or inexpe- 
diency of any action in its relation to the essential vocation 
of his life, so that he shall avoid that which does not promote 
its success. 

§ 31. But the absolute distinction of habit is the moral dis- 
tinction between the good and the bad. For from this stand- 
point alone can we finally decide wiiat is allowable and what 
is forbidden, what is advantageous and what is disadvan- 
tageous, 

§ 32. As relates to form, habit may be either passive or ac- 
tive. The passive is that which teaches us to bear the vicis- 
situdes of nature as well as of history with such composure 
that we shall hold our ground against them, being always 
equal to ourselves, and that we shall not allow our power of 
acting to be paralyzed through any mutations of fortune. 
Passive habit is not to be confounded with obtuseness in re- 
ceiving impressions, a blank abstraction from the affair in 
hand which at bottom is found to be nothing more than a 
selfishness which desires to be left undisturbed : it is simply 
composure of mind in view of changes over which we have no 
control. While we vividly experience joy and sorrow, pain 
and pleasure — inwoven as these are with the change of sea- 
sons, of the weather, &c. — with the alternation of life and 
death, of happiness and misery, we ought nevertheless to 
harden ourselves against them so that at the same time in 
our consciousness of the supreme worth of the mind we shall 
build up the inaccessible stronghold of Freedom in ourselves. 
— Active habit [or behavior] is found realized in a wide range 
of activity which appears in manifold forms, such as skill, 



Formation of Habits. 17 

dexterity, readiness of information, &c. It is a steeling of 
the internal for action upon the external, as the Passive is a 
steeling of the internal against the influences of the external. 

§ 33. Habit is the general form which instruction takes. 
For since it reduces a condition or an activity within our- 
selves to an instinctive use and wont, it is necessary for 
any thorough instruction. Bat as, according to its content, it 
may be either proper or improper, advantageous or disadvan- 
tageous, good or bad, and according to its form may be the 
assimilation of the external by the internal, or the impress 
of the internal upon the external, Education must procure 
for the pupil the power of being able to free himself from 
one habit and to adopt another. Through his freedom he 
must be able not only to renounce any habit formed, but to 
form a new one ; and he must so govern his system of habits 
that it shall exhibit a constant progress of development into 
greater freedom. We must discipline ourselves, as a means 
toward the ever-changing realization of the Gfood in us, con- 
stantly to form and to break habits. 

— We must characterize those habits as bad which relate 
only to our convenience or our enjoyment. They are often 
not blamable in themselves, but there lies in them a hidden 
danger that they may allure us into luxury or effeminacy. 
But it is a false and mechanical way of looking at the afiair 
if we suppose that a habit which has been formed by a cer- 
tain number of repetitions can be broken by an equal number 
of denials. We can never renounce a habit utterly except 
through a clearness of judgment which decides it to be unde- 
sirable, and through firmness of will. — 

§ 34. Education comprehends also the reciprocal action of 
the opposites, authority and obedience, rationality and indi- 
viduality, work and play, habit and spontaneity. If we ima- 
gine that these can be reconciled by rules, it will be in vain 
that we try to restrain the youth in these relations. But a 
failure in education in this particular is very possible through 
the freedom of the pupil, through special circumstances, or 
through the errors of the educator himself. And for this very 
reason any theory of Education must take into account in 
the beginning this negative possibility. It must consider be- 
forehand the dangers which threaten the pupil in all possible 



18 Protection against Temptation. 

ways even before they surround him, and fortify him against 
them. Intentionally to expose him to temptation in order to 
prove his strength, is devilish ; and, on the other hand, to 
guard him against the chance of dangerous temptation, to 
wrap him in cotton (as the proverb says), is womanish, ridic- 
ulous, fruitless, and much more dangerous ; for temptation 
comes not alone from without, but quite as often from with- 
in, and secret inclination seeks and creates for itself the 
opportunity for its gratification, often perhaps an unnatural 
one. The truly preventive activity consists not in an abstract 
seclusion from the world, all of whose elements are innate in 
each individual, but in the activity of knowledge and disci- 
pline, modified according to age and culture. 

— If one endeavors to deprive the youth of all free and in- 
dividual intercourse with the world, one only falls into a 
continual watching of him, and the consciousness that he is 
watched destroys in him all elasticity of spirit, all confidence, 
all originality. The police shadow of control obscures all 
independence and systematically accustoms him to depend- 
ence. As the tragi-comic story of Peter Schlemihl shows, 
one cannot lose his own shadow without falling into the sad- 
dest fatalities ; but the shadow of a constant companion, as 
in the pedagogical system of the Jesuits, undermines all 
naturalness. And if one endeavors too strictly to guard 
against that which is evil and forbidden, the intelligence of 
the pupils reacts in deceit against such efforts, till the educa- 
tors are amazed that such crimes as come often to light can 
have arisen under such careful control. — 

§ 35. If there should appear in the youth any decided moral 
deformity which is opposed to the ideal of his education, the 
instructor must at once make inquiry as to the history of its 
origin, because the negative and the positive are very closely 
connected in his being, so that what appears to be negligence, 
rudeness, immorality, foolishness, or oddity, may arise from 
some real needs of the youth which in their development 
have only taken a wrong direction. 

§ 36. If it should appear on such examination that the 
negative action was only a product of wilful ignorance, of ca- 
price, or of arbitrariness on the part of the youth, then this 
calls for a simple prohibition on the part of the educator, no 



Reproof and Punishment. 19 

reason being assigned. His authority must be sufficient to 
tlie pupil without any reason. Only when this has happened 
more than once, and the youth is old enough to understand, 
should the prohibition, together with the reason therefor, be 
given. 

— This should, however, be brief; the explanation must 
retain its disciplinary character, and must not become ex- 
tended into a doctrinal essay, for in such a case the youth 
easily forgets that it was his own misbehavior which was the 
occasion of the explanation. The statement of the reason 
must be honest, and it must present to the youth the point 
most easy for him to seize. False reasons are morally blama- 
ble in themselves, and they tend only to confuse. It is a great 
mistake to unfold to the youth the broadening consequences 
which his act may bring. These uncertain possibilities seem 
to him too powerless to affect him particularly. The severe 
lecture wearies him, especially if it be stereotyped, as is apt 
to be the case with fault-finding and talkative instructors. 
But more unfortunate is it if the painting of the gloomy 
background to which the consequences of the wrong-doing of 
the youth may lead, should fill his feelings and imagination 
prematurely with gloomy fancies, because then the represen- 
tation has led him one step toward a state of wretchedness 
which in the future man may become fearful depression and 
degradation. — 

§ 37. If the censure is accompanied with a threat of punish- 
ment, then we have the same kind of reproof which in daily 
life we call "scolding;" but if reproof is given, the pupil 
must be made to feel that it is in earnest. 

§ 38. Only when all other efforts have failed, is punishment, 
which is the real negation of the error, the transgression, or 
the vice, justifiable. Punishment inflicts intentionally pain 
on the pupil, and its object is, by means of this sensation, to 
bring him to reason, a result which neither our simple prohi- 
bition, our explanation, nor our threat of punishment, has 
been able to reach. But the punishment, as such, must not 
refer to the subjective totality of the youth, or his dispo- 
sition in general, but only to the act which, as result, is a 
manifestation of the disposition. It acts mediately on the dis- 
position, but leaves the inner being untouched directly ; and 



20 Correction versus Satisfaction of Justice. 

this is not only demanded by justice, but on account of the 
sophistry that is inherent in human nature, which desires to 
assign to a deed many motives, it is even necessary. 

§ 39. Punishment as an educational means is nevertheless 
essentially corrective, since, by leading the youth to a proper 
estimation of his fault and a positive change in his behavior, 
it seeks to improve him. At the same time it stands as a sad 
indication of the insufficiency of the means previously used. 
On no account should the youth be frightened from the com- 
mission of a misdemeanor, or from the repetition of his nega- 
tive deed through fear of punishment — a system which leads 
always to terrorism : but, although it may have this effect, it 
should, before all things, impress upon him the recognition 
of the fact that the negative is not allowed to act as it will 
without limitation, but rather that the Good and the True 
have the absolute power in the world, and that they are never 
without the means of overcoming anything that contradicts 
them. 

— In the statute-laws, punishment has the opposite office. 
It must first of all satisfy justice, and only after this is done 
can it attempt to improve the guilty. If a government should 
proceed on the same basis as the educator it would mistake 
its task, because it has to deal with adults, whom it elevates 
to the honorable position of responsibility for their own acts. 
The state must not go back to the psychological ethical gene- 
sis of a negative deed. It must assign to a secondary rank 
of importance the biographical moment which contains the 
deed in process and the circumstances of a mitigating charac- 
ter, and it must consider first of all the deed in itself. It is 
quite otherwise with the educator ; for he deals with human 
beings who are relatively undeveloped, and who are only 
growing toward responsibility. So long as they are still 
under the care of a teacher, the responsibility of their deed 
belongs in part to him. If we confound the standpoint in 
which punishment is administered in the state with that in 
education, we work much evil. — 

§ 40. Punishment as a negation of a negation, considered 
as an educational means, cannot be determined a priori, but 
must always be modified by the peculiarities of the individual 
offender and by the peculiar circumstances. Its administra- 



Tliree Kinds of Punishment. 21 

tion calls for the exercise of the ingenuity and tact of the 
educator. 

§ 41. Generally speaking, we must make a distinction be- 
between the sexes, as well as between the different periods of 
3^outh ; (1) some kind of corporal punishment is most suita- 
ble for children, (2) isolation for older boys and girls, and (3) 
punishment based on the sense of honor for young men and 
women. 

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment is the production of physical 
pain. The youth is generally whipped, and this kind of pun- 
ishment, provided always that it is not too often administered 
or with undue severity, is the proper way of dealing with wil- 
ful defiance, with obstinate carelessness, or with a really per- 
verted will, so long or so often as the higher perception is 
closed against appeal. The imposing of other physical pun- 
ishment, e.g. that of depriving the pupil of food, partakes of 
cruelty. The view which sees in the rod the panacea for all 
the teacher's embarrassments is censurable, but equally un- 
desirable is the false sentimentality which assumes that the 
dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child, 
and confounds self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, 
to which a blow is the most natural form of reaction, in which 
all other forms of influence at last end. 

— The fully-grown man ought never to be whipped, because 
this kind of punishment reduces him to the level of the child, 
and, when it becomes barbarous, to that of a brute animal, 
and so is absohitely degrading to him. In the English schools 
the rod is much used. If a pupil of the first class be put back 
into the second at Eton, he, although before exempt from 
flogging, becomes liable to it. But however necessary this 
system of flogging of the English aristocracy may be in the 
discipline of their schools, flogging in the English army is a 
shameful thing for the free people of Great Britain. — 

§ 43. (2) By Isolation we remove the offender temporarily 
from the society of his fellows. The boy left alone, cut off 
from all companionship, and left absolutely to himself, suffers 
from a sense of helplessness. The time passes heavily, and 
soon he is very anxious to be allowed to return to the com- 
pany of parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and fellow- 
pupils. 



22 Sense of Honor in the Pupil. 

— To leave a cMld entirely to himself without any supervi- 
sion, even if one shuts him up in a dark room, is as mistaken 
a practice as to leave a few together without supervision, 
as is too often done where they are kept after school, when 
they give the freest rein to their childish wantonness and 
commit the wildest pranks. — 

§ 44. (3) This way of isolating a child does not touch his 
sense of honor at all, and is soon forgotten because it relates to 
only one side of his conduct. It is quite different from pun- 
ishment based on the sense of honor, which, in a formal 
manner, shuts the youth out from companionship because 
he has attacked the principle which holds society together, 
and for this reason can no longer be considered as belong- 
ing to it. Honor is the recognition of one individual by 
others as their equal. Through his error, or it may be his 
crime, he has simply made himself unequal to them, and in 
so far has separated himself from them, so that his banish- 
ment from their society is only the outward expression of the 
real isolation which he himself has brought to pass in his 
inner nature, and which he by means of his negative act only 
betrayed to the outer world. Since the punishment founded on 
the sense of honor affects the whole ethical man and makes 
a lasting impression upon his memory, extreme caution is 
necessary in its application lest a permanent injury be in- 
flicted upon the character. The idea of his perpetual con- 
tinuance in disgrace, destroys in a man all aspiration for 
improvement. 

— Within the family this feeling of honor cannot be so ac- 
tively developed, because every member of it is bound to 
every other immediately by natural ties, and hence is equal 
to every other. Within its sacred circle, he who has isolated 
himself is still beloved, though it may be through tears. 
However bad may be the deed he has committed, he is never 
given up, but the deepest sympathy is felt for him because 
he is still brother, father, &c. But first in the contact of one 
family with another, and still more in the contact of an indi- 
vidual with any institution which is founded not on natural 
ties, but is set over against him as a distinct object, this feel- 
ing of honor appears. In the school, and in the matter of 
ranks and classes in a school, this is very important. — 



Limits of Education. 23 

§ 45. It is important to consider well this gradation of 
punishment (whicli, starting with sensuous physical pain, 
passes through the external teleology of temporary isolation 
up to the idealism of the sense of honor), both in relation to 
the different ages at which they are appropriate and to the 
training which they hring with them. Every punishment 
must be considered merely as a means to some end, and, in so 
far, as transitory. The pupil must always be deeply conscious 
that it is very painful to his instructor to be obliged to pun- 
ish him. This pathos of another's sorrow for the sake of his 
cure which he perceives in the mien, in the tone of the voice, 
in the delay \\ ith which the punishment is administered, will 
become a purifying fire for his soul. 



The Limits of Education. 

§ 46. The form of Education reaches its limits with the idea 
of punishment, because this is the attempt to subsume the 
negative reality and to make it conformable to its positive 
idea. But the limits of Education are found in the idea of its 
nature, which is to fashion the individual into theoretical and 
practical rationality. The authority of the Educator at last 
becomes imperceptible, and it passes over into advice and ex- 
ample, and obedience changes from blind conformity to free 
gratitude and attachment. Individuality wears off its rough 
edges, and is transfigured into the universality and necessity 
of Reason without losing in this process its identity. Work 
becomes enjoyment, and he finds his play in a change of 
activity. The youth takes possession of himself, and can be 
left to himself. 

— There are two widely differing views with regard to the 
limits of Education. One lays great stress on the weakness 
of the pupil and the power of the teacher. According to this 
view, Education has for its province the entire formation of 
the youth. The despotism of this view often manifests itself 
where large numbers are to be educated together, and with 
very undesirable results, because it assumes that the indivi- 
dual pupil is only a specimen of the whole, as if the school 
were a great factory where each piece of goods is to be 
stamped exactly like all the rest. Individuality is reduced 



24 The Limits of Indimduality. 

by the tyranny of such despotism to one uniform level till all 
originality is destroyed, as in cloisters, barracks, and orphan 
asylums, where only one individual seems to exist. There is 
a kind of Pedagogy also which fancies that one can thrust 
into or out of the individual pupil what one will. This may 
be called a superstitious belief in the power of Education. — 
The opposite extreme disbelieves this, and advances the pol- 
icy which lets alone and does nothing, urging that individu- 
ality is unconquerable, and that often the most careful and 
far-sighted education fails of reaching its aim in so far as it 
is opposed to the nature of the youth, and that this individu- 
ality has made of no avail all eflForts toward the obtaining of 
any end which was opposed to it. This representation of the 
fruitlessness of all pedagogical efforts engenders an indiffer- 
ence towards it which would leave, as a result, only a sort of 
vegetation of individuality growing at hap-hazard. — 

§ 47. The limit of Education is (1) a Subjective one, a 
limit made by the individuality of the youth. This is a 
definite limit. Whatever does not exist in this individu- 
ality as a possibility cannot be developed from it. Education 
can only lead and assist ; it cannot create. What Nature 
has denied to a man, Education cannot give him any more 
than it is able, on the other hand, to annihilate entirely his 
original gifts, although it is true that his talents may be 
suppressed, distorted, and measurably destroyed. But the 
decision of the question in what the real essence of any one's 
individuality consists can never be made with certainty till 
he has left behind him his years of development, because it 
is then only that he first arrives at the consciousness of his 
entire self; besides, at this critical time, in the first place, 
much knowledge only superficially acquired will drop off; 
and again, talents, long slumbering and unsuspected, may 
first make their appearance. Whatever has been forced upon 
a child in opposition to his individuality, whatever has been 
only driven into him and has lacked receptivity on his 
side, or a rational ground on the side of culture, remains at- 
tached to his being only as an external ornament, a foreign 
outgrowth which enfeebles his own proper character. 

— We must distinguish from that aflfectation which arises 
through a misunderstanding of the limit of individuality, the 



Limit in the Means of Educatiuit. 25 

way which many children and young persons have of sup- 
posing when they see models finished and complete in grown 
persons, that they themselves are endowed by Nature with 
the power to develop into the same. When they see a real- 
ity which corresponds to their own possibility, the presenti- 
ment of a like or a similar attainment moves them to an 
imitation of it as a model personality. This may be some- 
times carried so far as to be disagreeable or ridiculous, but 
should not be too strongly censured, because it springs from 
a positive striving after culture, and needs only proper 
direction. — 

§ 48. (2) The Ohjective limit of Education lies in the 
means which can be appropriated for it. That the talent for 
a certain culture shall be present is certainly the first thing ; 
but the cultivation of this talent is the second, and no less 
necessary. But how much cultivation can be given to it ex- 
tensively and intensively depends upon the means used, and 
these again are conditioned by the material resources of the 
family to which each one belongs. The greater and more 
valuable the means of culture which are found in a family 
are, the greater is the immediate advantage which the culture 
of each one has at the start. With regard to many of the 
arts and sciences this limit of education is of great signifi- 
cance. But the means alone are of no avail. The finest edu- 
cational apparatus will produce no fruit where correspond- 
ing talent is wanting, while on the other hand talent often 
accomplishes incredible feats with very limited means, and, if 
the way is only once open, makes of itself a centre of attrac- 
tion which draw s to itself with magnetic power the necessary 
means. The moral culture of each one is however, fortu- 
nately from its very nature, out of the reach of such de- 
pendence. 

— In considering the limit made by individuality we recog- 
nize the side of truth in that indifi'erence which considers 
Education entirely superfluous, and in considering the means 
of culture we find the truth in the other extreme of pedagogi- 
cal despotism, which fancies that it can command whatever 
culture it chooses for any one without regard to his indi- 
viduality. — 

§ 49. (3) The Absolute limit of Education is the time when 
the youth has apprehended the problem which he has to 



26 ArrlDol at t?ie age of Majority. 

solve, lias learned .to know the means atliis disposal, and has- 
acquired a certain facility in using them. The end and aim 
of Education is the emancipation of the youth. It strives to 
make him self-dependent, and as soon as he has become so 
it v^^ishes to retire and to be able to leave him to the sole 
responsibility of his actions. To treat the youth after he has 
passed this point of time still as a youth, contradicts the very 
idea of Education, v^^hich idea finds its fulfilment in the attain- 
ment of majority by the pupil. Since the accomplishment of 
education cancels the original inequality betw^een the educa- 
tor and the pupil, nothing is more oppressing, nay, revolting^ 
to the latter than to be prevented by a continued dependence 
from the enjoyment of the freedom which he has earned. 

— The opposite extreme of the protracting of Education be- 
yond its proper time is necessarily the undue hastening of 
the Emancipation. — The question whether one is prepared 
for freedom has been often opened in politics. When any 
people have gone so far as to ask this question themselves,, 
it is no longer a question whether that j)eople are prepared 
for it, for without the consciousness of freedom this question 
would never have occurred to them. — 

§ 50. Although educators must now leave the youth free^ 
the necessity of further culture for him is still imperative. 
But it will no longer come directly through them. Their 
pre-arranged, pattern-making work is now supplanted by self- 
education. Each sketches for himself an ideal to which in 
his life he seeks to approximate every day. 

— In the work of self-culture one friend can help another 
by advice and example ; but he cannot educate, for education 
presupposes inequality. — The necessities of human nature 
produce societies in which equals seek to influence each 
other in a pedagogical way, since they establish by certain 
steps of culture different classes. They jjresuppose Education 
in the ordinary sense. But they wish to bring about Educa- 
tion in a higher sense, and therefore they veil the hast form of 
their ideal in the mystery of secrecy. — To one who lives on 
contented with himself and without the impulse toward self- 
culture, unless his unconcern springs from his belonging to 
a savage state of society, the Germans give the name of 
Philistine, and he is always repulsive to the student who is 
intoxicated with an ideal. 



( 27 ) 



SECOND PART. 
The Sj)ecial Elements of E«liication. 

§ 51. Education in general consists in the develo]3inent in 
man of his inb.orn theoretical and practical rationality; it 
takes on the form of labor, which changes that state or 
condition, which appears at first only as a mere concep- 
tion, into a fixed habit, and transfigures individuality into 
a worthy humanity. Education ends in that emancipa- 
tion of the youth which places him on his own feet. The 
special elements which form the concrete content of all Edu- 
cation in general are the Life, Cognition, and Will of man. 
Without life mind has no phenomenal reality ; without cog- 
nition, no genuine, i. e. conscious, will ; and without will, 
no self-assurance of life and of cognition. It is true that 
these three elements are in real existence inseparable, and 
that consequently in the dialectic they continually pass over 
into one another. But none the less on this account do they 
themselves prescribe their own succession, and they have 
a relative and periodical ascendancy over each other. In 
Infancy, up to the fifth or sixth year, the purely physical 
development takes the precedence ; Childhood is the time of 
learning, in a proper sense, an act by which the child gains 
for himself the picture of the world such as mature minds, 
through experience and insight, have painted it ; and, finally, 
Youth is the transition period to practical activity, to which 
the self-determination of the will must give the first impulse. 

§ 52. The classification of the special elements of Peda- 
gogics is hence very simple : (1) the Physical, (2) the Intel- 
lectual, (3) the Practical. (We sometimes apply to these the 
words Orthobiotics, Didactics, and Pragmatics.) 

— iEsthetic training constitutes only an element of the edu- 
cation of Intellectual Education, just as social, moral, and 
religions training form elements of Practical Education. But 
because these latter elements concern themselves with what 



28 Physical Education. 

is external, the name " Plasmatics "" is appropriate. In this 
sphere, Pedagogics should coincide with Politics, Ethics, and 
Religion ; hut it is distinguished from them through the apti- 
tude which it brings with it of putting into practice the prob- 
lems of the other three. The scientific arrangement of these 
ideas must therefore show that the former, as the more ab- 
stract, constitutes the conditions, and the latter, as the more 
•concrete, the ground of the former, which are presupposed ; 
;and in consequence of this it is itself their principal teleo- 
logical presupposition, just as in man the will presupposes 
the cognition, and cognition life ; while, at the same time, 
life, in a deeper sense, must presuppose cognition, and cog- 
nition will. — 

First Division. 
PHYSICAL, EDUCA.TIOX. 

§ 53. The art of living rightly is based upon a comprehen- 
sion of the process of Life. Life is the restless dialectic 
which ceaselessly transforms the inorganic into the organic, 
but at the same time creates out of itself another inorganic, 
in which it separates from itself whatever part of the inor- 
ganic has not been assimilated, which it took up as a stimu- 
lant, and that which has become dead and burned out. The 
organism is healthy when its reality corresponds to this idea 
of the dialectic, of a life which moves up and down, to and 
fro ; of formation and re-formation, of organizing and disor- 
ganizing. All the rules for Physical Education, or of Hygi- 
ene, are derived from this conception. 

§ 54. It follows from this that the change of the inorganic 
to the organic is going on not only in the organism as a whole, 
but also in its every organ and in every part of ever}^ organ ; 
.and that the organic as soon as it has attained its highest 
point of energy, is again degraded to the inorganic and 
thrown out. Every cell has its history. Activit}^ is, there- 
fore, not contradictory to the organism, but favors in it the 
natural progressive and regressive metamorphosis. This pro- 
cess can go on harmoniously ; that is, the organism can be 
in health only when not only the whole organism, but each 
special organ, is allowed, after its productive activity, the 
corresponding rest and recreation necessary for its self- 
renewal. We have this periodicity exemplified in waking 



Dietetics. 29 

and sleeping, also in exhalation and inlialation, excretion 
and taking in of material. When we have discovered the 
relative antagonism of the organs and their periodicity, we- 
have found the secret of the perennial renewal of life. 

§ 55. Fatigue makes its appearance when any organ, or the 
organism in general, is denied time for the return movement 
into itself and for renovation. It is possible for some one 
organ, as if isolated, to exercise a great and long- continued 
activity, even to the point of fatigue, while the other organs 
rest ; as e.g. the lungs, in speaking, while the other parts are 
quiet ; on the other hand, it is not well to speak and run at 
the same time. The idea that one can keep the organism in 
"better condition by inactivity, is an error which rests upon a 
mechanical apprehension of life. Equally false is the idea 
that health depends upon the quantity and excellence of the 
food; without the force to assimilate it, it acts fatally rather 
than stimulatingly. l^ue strength arises only from actimty. 

— The later physiologists will gradually destro3^ in the 
system of culture of modern people, the preconceived notion 
which recommended for the indolent and lovers of pleasure 
powerful stimulants, very fat food, &c. Excellent works ex- 
ist on this question. — 

§ 56. Physical Education, as it concerns the repairing, the 
motor, or the nervous, activities, is divided into (1) Diatetics, 
(2) Grymnastics, (8) Sexual Education, In real life these ac- 
tivities are scarcely separable, but for the sake of exposition 
we must consider them apart. In the regular development of 
the human being, moreover, the repairing system has a rela- 
tive precedence to the motor system, and the latter to the 
sexual maturity. But Pedagogics can treat of these ideas 
only with reference to the infant, the child, and the youth. 

F t R S T CHAPTER. 

Dietetics. 

§ 57. Dietetics is the art of sustaining the normal repair of 
the organism. Since this organism is, in the concrete, an 
individual one, the general principles of dietetics must, in 
their manner of application, vary with the sex, the age, the 
temperament, the occupation, and the other conditions, of the 
individual. Pedagogics as a science can only go over its gen- 



30 Dietetics. 

<3ral principles, and these can be named briefly. If we attempt 
to speak of details, we fall easily into triviality. So very 
important to the whole life of man is the proper care of his 
physical nature dnmng the first stages of its development, 
that the science of Pedagogics must not omit to consider the 
different systems which different people, according to their 
time, locality, and culture, have made for themselves ; many, 
it is true;, embracingisome preposterous ideas, but in general 
never devoid of j ustification in their time. 

§ 58. The infant's first nourishment must be the milk of its 
mother. The substitution of a nurse should be only an ex- 
ception justified alone by the illness of the mother; as a 
rule, as happens in France, it is simply bad, because a for- 
eign physical and moral element is introduced into the family 
through the nurse. The milk of an animal can never be as 
good for a child. 

§ 59. When the teeth appear, the child is first able to eat 
solid food ; but, until the second teeth come, he should be fed 
principally on light, fluid nourishment, and on vegetable diet. 

§ 60. When the sec(^nd teeth are fully formed, the human 
being is ready for animal as well as vegetable food. Too 
much meat is not good ; but it is an anatomical error to sup- 
pose that man, b}' the structure of his stomach, Avas origi- 
nally formed to live al(»ne on vegetable diet, and that animal 
food is a sign of his degeneracy. 

— The Hindoos, who subsist principally on vegetable diet, 
are not, as has been often asserted, a very gentle race : a 
glance into their history, or into their erotic poetry, shows 
them, to be quite as passionate as other peoples. — 

§ 61. Man is omnivorous. Children have therefore a natu- 
ral desire to taste of everything. For them eating and drink- 
ing possess a kind of poetry ; there is a theoretic ingredient 
blended with the material enjoyment. They have, on this 
account, a proneness to indulge, which is deserving of pun- 
ishment only when it is combined with disobedience and 
secrecy, or when it betrays cunning and greediness. 

§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are undergo- 
ing the most active progressive metamorphosis. In after-life 
sleep and waking should be subjected to periodical regula- 
tion, but not too exactly. 



Gymnastics. 31 

§ 63. The clotliirig of children should be adapted to them ; 
I.e. it should be cut according to the shape of the body, and 
it must be loose enough to allow free play to their desire for 
movement. 

— With regard to this as well as to the sleeping arrange- 
ments for children, less in regard to food — which is often 
too highly spiced and too liberal in tea, coffee, &c. — our age 
has become accustomed to a very rational system. The cloth- 
ing of children must be not only comfortable, but it should be 
made of simple and cheap material, so that the free enjoy- 
ment of the child may not be marred by the constant internal 
-anxiety that a rent or a spot may bring him a fault-tinding 
or angry word. From too great care as to clothing, may arise 
a meanness of mind which at last pays too great respect to 
it, or an empty frivolity. This last may be induced by dress- 
ing children too conspicuously. — 

§ 64. Cleanliness is a virtue to which children should be 
•accustomed 'for the sake of their physical well-being, as well 
as because, in a moral point of view, it is of the greatest sig- 
nificance. Cleanliness will not endure that things shall be 
deprived of their proper individuality through the elemental 
ohaos. It retains each as distinguished from every other. 
While it makes necessary to man pure air, cleanliness of 
surroundings, of clothing, and of his body, it develops in him 
a sense by which he perceives accurately the particular lim- 
its of being in general. 

S K C O N I> CHAPTER. 

Gymnastics. 

■ § 65. Gymnastics is the art of systematic training of the 
muscular system. The action of the voluntary muscles, which 
are regulated hy the nerves of the brain, in distinction from 
the involuntary automatic muscles depending on the spinal 
cord, while they are the means of man's intercourse with the 
external world, at the same time re-act upon the automatic 
muscles in digestion and sensation. Since the movement of 
the muscular fibres consists in the change of contraction and 
expansion, it follows that Gj^ranastics must bring about a 
change of movement which shall both contract and expand 
the muscles. 



32 Gymnastics. 

§ QQ. The system of gymnastic exercise of any nation cor- 
responds always to its way of lighting. So long as this 
consists in the personal struggle of a hand-to-hand contest, 
Gymnastics will seek to increase as much as possible indi- 
vidual strength and adroitness. As soon as the far-reaching 
missiles projected from lire-arms become the centre of all the 
operations of war, the individual is lost in a body of men, out 
of which he emerges only relatively in sharp-shooting, in the 
charge, in single contests, and in the retreat. Because of this 
incorporation of the individual in the one great whole, and 
because of the resulting unimportance of personal bravery, 
modern Gymnastics can never be the same as it was in an- 
cient times, even putting out of view the fact that the subjec- 
tiveness of the modern spirit is too great to allow it to devote 
so much attention to the care of the body, and the admira- 
tion of its beauty, as was given by the Greeks. 

— The Turners' unions and halls in Germany belong to the- 
period of subjective enthusiasm of the German student popu- 
lation, and had a political significance. At present, they 
have been brought back to their proper place as an Educa- 
tional means, and they are of great value, especially in large 
cities. Among the mountains, and even in the country towns, 
a special institution for bodily exercise is less necessary, for 
the matter takes care of itself. The attractions of the situa- 
tion and the games help to foster it. In great cities,, how- 
ever, the houses are often destitute of halls or open places 
where the children can take exercise in their leisure moments. 
In these cities, therefore, there must be some gymnastic hall 
where the sense of fellowship may be developed. Gym- 
nastics are not so essential for girls. In its place, dancing is 
sufficient, and gymnastics should be employed for them only 
where there exists any special weakness or deformity, when 
they may be used as a restorative or preservative. They are 
not to become Amazons. The boy, on the contrary, needs to 
acquire the feeling of good-fellowship. It is true that the 
school develops this in a measure, but not fully, because it 
determines the standing of the boy through his intellectual 
ambition. The academical youth will not take much interest 
in special gymnastics unless he can gain preeminence there- 
in. Running, leaping, climbing, and lifting, are too mean- 



■.*ii*"' 



1^ 



Gymnastics. 33 

ingles§ for tlieir more mature spirits. They can take a lively 
interest only in the exercises which have a warlike charac- 
ter. With the Prussians, and some other German states, the 
art of Gymastics identifies itself with military concerns. 

§ 67. The real idea of Gymnastics must always be that the 
spirit si) all rule over its naturalness, and shall make this an 
energetic and docile servant of its will. Strength and adroit- 
ness must unite and become confident skill. Strength, car- 
ried to its extreme produces the athlete ; adroitness, to its 
extreme, the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both. All im- 
mense force, fit only for display, must be held as far away 
as the idea of teaching Gymnastics with the motive of utility ; 
e.g. that by swimming one may save his life when he falls 
into the water, &c. Among other things, this may also be a 
consequence ; but the principle in general must always re- 
main: the necessity of the spirit of subjecting its organism of 
the body to the condition of a perfect means, so that it may 
never find itself limited by it. 

§ 68. Gymnastic exercises form a series from simple to 
compound. There appears to be so much arbitrariness in 
them that it is always very agreeable to the mind to find, on 
nearer inspection, some reason. The movements are (1) of 
the lower, (2) of the upper extremities ; (8) of the whole bo- 
dy, with relative striking out, now of the upper, now of the 
lower extremities. We distinguish, therefore, foot, arm, and 
trunk movements. 

§ 69. (1) The first series of foot-movements is the most 
important, and conditions the carriage of all the rest of the 
body. They are {a) walking ; {IS) running ; (c) leaping : each 
of these being capable of modifications, as the high and the 
low leap, the prolonged and the quick run. Sometimes we 
give to these diff'erent names, according to the means used, 
as walking on stilts ; skating ; leaping with a staff, or by 
means of the hands, as vaulting. Dancing is only the art of 
the graceful mingling of these movements ; and balancings 
only one form of walking. 

§ 70. (2) The second series embraces the arm-movements^ 
and it repeats also the movements of the first series. It in- 
cludes {a) lifting ; {h) swinging ; (c) throwing. All pole and 
bar practice comes under lifting, also climbing and carrying. 



34 Gymnastics. 

Under throwing, come quoit and ball-throwing, iind ni;ne-pin 
playing. All these movements are distingnished from each 
other, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively, in the 
position of the stretched and bent muscles ; e.g. running is 
something different from quick walking. 

§ 71. (3) The third series, or that of movements of the 
whole bodj^, differs from the preceding two, which should 
precede it, in this, th>at it brings the organism into contact 
with a living object, which it has to overcome through its 
own activit3^ This object is sometimes an element, some- 
times an animal, sometimes a man. Our divisions then are 
{a) swimming ; (h) riding ; (c) fighting, or single combat. In 
swimming, one must conquer the jdelding liquid material of 
water by arm and foot movements. The resistance met on 
a,ccount of currents and weaves may be very great, but it is 
still that of a will-less and passive object. But in riding 
man has to deal with a self-willed being whose vitality calls 
forth not only his strength but also his intelligence and cour- 
age. The exercise is therefore very complicated, and the rider 
must be able perpetually to individualize it according to the 
necessity ; at the same time, he must give attention not only 
to the horse, but to the nature of the ground and the entire 
surroundings. But it is only in the struggle with men that 
Gymnastics reaches its highest point, for in this man offers 
himself as a living antagonist to man and brings him into 
danger. It is no longer the spontaneous activity of an unrea- 
soning existence ; it is the resistance and attack of intelli- 
gence itself with which he has to deal. Fighting, or single 
<^ombat, is the truly chivalrous exercise, and this may be 
combined with horsemanship. 

— In the single combat there is found also a qualitative 
modification, whence we have three s^^stems: {a) boxing and 
wrestling ; {h) fencing with sticks ; and (c) rapier and broad- 
sword fencing. In the first, which was cultivated to its high- 
est point among the Greeks, direct immediateness rules. In 
the boxing of the English, a sailor-like propensity of this 
nation, fist-fighting is still retained as a custom. Fencing 
with a stick is found among the French mechanics, the so- 
called convpagnons. Men often use the cane in their contests ; 
it is a sort of refined club. When Ave use the sword or rapier, 



Sexual Education. 85 

the weapon becomes deadly. The Southern Europeans excel 
in the use of the rapier, the Germans in that of the sword. 
But the art of single combat is much degenerated, and the 
pistol-duel, through its increasing frequency, proves this de- 
generation. — 

T H I R J) e II A P 1 K U . 

Sexual Education. 

Note. — The paragraphs relating to Sexual Education are designed for parents 
rather than for teachers, the parent being the natural educator of the family and 
sexual education relating to the preservation and continuance of the family. 
This chapter is accordingly, for the most part, omitted here. It contains judi- 
cious reflections, invaluable to parents and guardians. — Tr. 

§ 72. Gymnastic exercises fall naturally into a systematic 
arrangement determined by the chronological order of devel- 
<oi3ment through infancy, childhood, and youth. Walking, 
running, and leaping belong, to the lirst period ; lifting, swing- 
ing, and throwing, to tlie second ; swimming, riding, and 
bodily contests, to the' third, and these last may also be con- 
tinued into manhood. But with the arrival at j^outh, a new 
■epoch makes its appearance in the organism. It prepares 
itself for the propagation of the species. It expands the indi- 
vidual through the need whicli he feels of uniting himself 
with another individual of the same species, but who is a 
polar opposite to him, in order to preserve the two in a new 
individual. The blood rushes more vigorously ; the muscu- 
lar strength becomes more easily roused into activity ; an 
indefinable impulse, a sweet melancholy takes possession 
of the being. This period demands a special care in the 
educator. 

§ 73. The general preventive guards must be found in a 
rational system of food and exercise. By care in these direc- 
tions, the development of the bones, and with them of the 
brain and spinal cord at this period, may be led to a proper 
strength, and that the easily-moulded material may not be 
perverted from its normal functions in the development of 
the body to a premature manifestation of the sexual instinct. 
♦ § 74. Special forethought is necessary lest the brain be too 
early over-strained, and lest, in consequence of such preco- 
cious and excessive action, the foundation for a morbid exci- 
tation of the whole nervous system be laid, which may easily 



36 Intellectual Education — Psycliological Faculties. 

lead to effeminate and voluptuous reveries, and to brooding 
over obscene representations. The excessive reading of nov- 
els, whose exciting pages delight in painting the love of the 
sexes for each other and its sensual phases, may lead to this,, 
and then the mischief is done. 

Second Division. 

INTELLECTUAL, EDUCATIOX. 

§ 80. Mens sana in corpore sano is correct as a pedagogical 
maxim, but false in the judgment of individual cases ; because 
it is possible, on the one hand, to have a healthy mind in an 
unhealthy body, and, on the other hand, an unhealthy mind 
in a healthy body. To strive after the harmony of soul and 
body is the material condition of all proper activity. The 
development of intelligence presupposes physical health. 
Here we are to speak of the science of the art of Teaching. 
This had its condition on the side of nature, as was before 
seen, in physical Education, but in the sphere of mind it is 
related to Psycliology and Logic. It unites, in Teaching, con- 
siderations on Psychology as well as a Logical method. 

FIRST CHAPTER. 

The Psychological Presupposition. 

§ 81. If we would have a sound condition of Philosophy, it 
must, in intellectual Education, refer to the conception of 
mind which has been unfolded in Psychology ; and it must 
appear as a defect in scientilic method if Psychology, or at 
least the conception of the theoretical mind, is treated again 
as within Pedagogics. We must take something for granted. 
Psychology, then, will be consulted no further than is requi- 
site to place on a sure basis the pedagogical function which 
relates to it. 

§ 82. The conception of attention is the most important to 
Pedagogics of all those derived from Psychology. Mind is 
essentially self-activitj^. Nothing exists for it which it does 
not itself posit as its own. We hear it not seldom implied 
that something from outside conditions must make an im- 
pression on the mind, but this is an error. Mind lets noth- 
ing act upon it unless it has rendered itself receptive to it. 
Without this preparatory self- excitation the object does not 



PsycTiological Faculties. 87 

really penetrate it, and it passes by the object unconsciously 
or indift'erently. The horizon of perception changes for each 
person with his peculiarities and culture. Attention is the 
adjusting of the observer to the object in order to seize it in 
its unit}' and diversity. Relatively, the observer allows, for 
a moment, his relation to all other surroundings to cease, so 
that he may establish a relation with this one. Without this 
essentially spontaneous activity, nothing exists for the mind. 
All result in teaching and learning depends upon the clear- 
ness and strength with which distinctions are made, and the 
saying, hene qui distinguit hene docit, applies as well to the 
pupil. 

§ 83. Attention, depending as it does on the self-determin- 
ation of the observer, can therefore be improved, and the pu- 
pil made attentive, by the educator. Education must accus- 
tom him to an exact, rapid, and many-sided attention, so that 
at the first contact with an object he may grasp it sufficiently 
and truly, and that it shall not be necessary for him always 
to be adding to his acquisitions concerning it. The twilight 
and partialness of intelligence which forces us always to new 
corrections because a pupil at the very commencement did 
not give entire attention, must not be tolerated. 

§ 84. We learn from Psychology that mind does not consist 
of distinct faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only 
clifi'erent activities of the same power. Each one is just as 
essential as the other, on which account Education must grant 
to each facult}^ its claim to the same fostering care. If we 
would construe correctly the axiom a potiori fit denoTninatio 
to mean that man is distinguished from animals by thought, 
and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must 
not forget that feeling and representing are not less neces- 
sary to a trulj^ complete human being. The special direction 
which the activity of apprehending intelligence takes are 
(1) Perception, (2) Conception, (3) Thinking. Dialectically, 
they pass over into each other ; not that Perception rises into 
Conception, and Conception into Thinking, but that Thinking 
goes back into Conception, and this again into Perception. 
In the development of the young, the Perceptive faculty is 
most active in the infant, the Conceptive in the child, and the 



38 The IntuUiDe Epocli. 

Thinking in the youth; and thus we may distinguish an in- 
tuitive, an imaginative, and a logical epoch. 

— G-reat errors arise from the misapprehension of these dif- 
ferent phases and of their diales^ic, since the different forms 
which are suitable to* the different grades of youth are min- 
gled. The infant certainly thinks while he perceives, but this 
thinking is to him unconscious. Or, if he has acquired per- 
ceptions, he makes them into conceptions, and demonstrates 
his freedom in playing with them. This play must not be 
taken as mere amusement ; it also signifies that he takes 
care to preserve his self-determination, and his power of 
idealizing, in opposition to the pleasant filling of his con- 
sciousness with material. Herein the delight of the child for 
fairy tales finds its reason. The fairy tale constantly destroys 
the limits of common actuality. The abstract understanding 
cannot endure this arbitrariness and want of fixed conditions^ 
and thus would prefer that children should read, instead^ 
home-made stories of the "Charitable Ann," of the ''Heedless 
Frederick," of the "Inquisitive Wilhelmine," &c. Above all, 
it praises "Robinson Crusoe," which contains much hetero- 
geneous matter, but nothing improbable. When the youth 
and maiden of necessity pass over into the earnestness of real 
life, the drying up of the imagination and the domination of 
the understanding presses in. 

I. The Intuitive Ejjoch. 

§ 85. Perception, as the beginning of intellectual culture,, 
is the free grasping of a content immediately present to the 
spirit. Education can do nothing directly toward the per- 
formance of this act ; it can only assist in making it eas}^ : — 
(1) it can isolate the subject of consideration ; (2) it can give 
facility in the transition to another ; (3) it can promote the 
many-sidedness of the interest, by which means the return 
to a perception already obtained has always a fresh charm. 

§ 86. The immediate perception of many things is impos- 
sible, and yet the necessity for it is obvious. We must then 
have recourse to a mediated perception, and supply the lack 
of actual seeing by representations. But here the difiiculty 
presents itself, that there are many objects which we are not 



The Intuitive Epoch. 39 

able to represent of the same size as they really are, and we 
must have a reduced scale ; and there follows a difficuUy in 
making the representation, as neither too large nor too small. 
An explanation is then also necessary as a judicious supple- 
ment to the picture. 

§ 87. Pictures are extremely valuable aids to instracrion 
when they are correct and cliaracteristic. Correctness must 
be demanded in these substitutes for natural objects, histo- 
rical persons and scenes. Without this correctness, the pic- 
ture, if not an impediment, is, to say the least, useless. 

— It is only since the last half of the seventeenth century^ 
i.e. since the disappearance of real painting, that the picture- 
book has appeared as an educational means ; tirst of all, 
coming from miniature painting. Up to that time, public life 
had plenty of pictures of arms, furniture, houses, and church- 
es ; and men, from their fondness for constantly moving 
about, were more weary of immediate perception. It was 
only afterwards when, in the excitement of the thirty- years* 
war, the arts of Sculpture and Painting and Christian and 
Pagan Mythology became extinct, that there arose a greater 
necessity for pictured representations. The Orhis Rerum 
Sensualiwm Pictus., which was also to be janua linguarum 
reserata, of Amos Comenius, appeared first in 1658, and was 
reprinted in 1805. Many valuable illustrated books followed. 
Since that time innumerable illustrated Bibles and histories 
have apxDeared, but many of them look only to the pecu- 
niary profit of the author or the publisher. It is revolting to 
see the daubs that are given to children. They are highly 
colored, but as to correctness, to say nothing of character, 
they are good for nothing. With a little conscientiousness 
and scientific knowledge very difi'erent results could be ob- 
tained with the same outlay of money and of strength. The 
uniformity which exists in the stock of books which Ger- 
man book-selling has set in circulation is really disgraceful. 
Everywhere we find the same types, even in ethnographical 
pictures. In natural history, the illustrations were often 
drawn from the imagination or copied from miserable mod- 
els. This has changed very much for the better. The same 
is true of architectural drawings and landscapes, for which 
we have now better copies. — 



40 The Inta'div)e Epoch. 

§ 88. Children have naturally a desire to collect things, and 
this may be so guided that they shall collect and arrange 
plants, butterflies, beetles, shells, skeletons, &c., and thus 
gain exactness and reality in their perception. Especially 
should they practise drawing, which leads them to form ex- 
act images of objects. But drawing, as children practise it, 
does not have the educational signiticance of cultivating in 
them an appreciation of art, but rather that of educating the 
■eye, as this must be exercised in estimating distances, sizes, 
4ind colors. It is, moreover, a great gain in many ways, if, 
through a suitable course of lessons in drawing, the child is 
advanced to a knowledge of the elementary forms of nature. 

— That pictures should afi'ect children as works of art is 
not to be desired. They confine themselves at first to distin- 
guishing the outlines and colors, and do not yet appreciate 
the execution. If the children have access to real works of 
art, we may safely trust in their power, and quietly await 
their moral or aesthetic effect. — 

§ 89. In order that looking at pictures shall not degenerate 
into mere diversion, explanations should accompanj^ them. 
Only when the thought embodied in the illustration is point- 
ed out, can they be useful as a means of instruction. Simply 
looking at them is of as little value towards this end as is 
water for baptism without the Holy Spirit. Our age inclines 
at present to the superstition that man is able, by means 
of simple intuition, to attain a knowledge of the essence of 
things, and thereb}^ dispense with the trouble of thinking. 
Illustrations are the order of the day, and, in the place of 
enjoyable descriptions, we find miserable pictures. It is in 
vain to try to get behind things, or to comprehend them, ex- 
cept by thinking. 

§ 90. The ear as well as the eye must be cultivated. Music 
must be considered the first educational means to this end, 
but it should be music inspired by ethical purity. Hearing 
is the most internal of all the senses, and should on this 
account be treated with the greatest delicacy. Especially 
should the child be taught that he is not to look upon speech 
as merely a vehicle for communication and for gaining in- 
formation; it should also give pleasure, and therefore he 
should be taught to speak distinctly and with a good style, 



The Innaginatixie Epoch. 41 

and this lie can do only when he carefully considers what he 
is going to say. 

— Among the Greeks, extraordinary care was given to mu- 
sical cultivation, especially in its ethical relation. SuflBcient 
proof of this is found in the admirable detailed statements 
on this point in the "Republic" of Plato and in the last book 
of the ''Politics" of Aristotle. Among modern nations, also, 
music holds a high place, and makes its appearance as a con- 
stant element of education. Piano-playing has become gen- 
eral, and singing is also taught. But the ethical signihcance 
of music is too little considered. Instruction in music often 
aims only to train pupils for display in society, and the ten- 
dency of the melodies which are played is restricted more 
and more to orchestral pieces of an exciting or bacchanalian 
character. The railroad- gallop-style only makes the nerves 
of youth vibrate with stimulating excitement. Oral speech, 
the highest form of the personal manifestation of mind, was 
also treated with great reverence by the ancients. Among 
us, communication is so generally carried on by writing and 
reading, that the art of speaking distinctly, correctly, and 
agreeably, has become very much neglected. Practice in 
declamation accomplishes, as a general thing, very little in 
this direction. But we may expect that the increase of pub- 
lic speaking occasioned by our political and religious assem- 
blies may have a favorable influence in this particular. — 

II. The Imaginative Epoch. 

§ 91. The activity of Perception results in the formation of 
an internal picture or image of its ideas which intelligence 
can call up at any time without the sensuous, immediate pres- 
ence of its object, and thus, through abstraction and general- 
ization, arises the conception. The mental image may (1) be 
compared with the perception from which it sprang, or (2) it 
may be arbitrarily altered and combined with other images, 
or (3) it may be held fast in the form of abstract signs or sym- 
bols which intelligence invents for it. Thus originate the 
functions (1) of the verification of conceptions, (2) of the crea- 
tive imagination, and (3) of memory ; but for their full de- 
velopment we must refer to Psychology. 

§ 93. (1) The mental image which we form of an object may 

4 



42 The Imaginative Epoch. 

be correct ; again, it may be partly or wholly defective, if we 
have neglected some of the predicates of the perception which 
presented themselves, or in so far as we have added to it other 
predicates which only seemingly belonged to it, and which 
were attached to it only by its accidental empirical connection 
with other existences. Education must, therefore, foster the 
habit of comparing our conceptions with the perceptions from 
which they arose ; and these perceptions, since they are lia- 
ble to change by reason of their empirical connection with 
other objects, must be frequently compared with our con- 
ceptions previously formed by abstractions from them. 

§ 93. (2) We are thus limited in our conceptions by our 
perceptions, but we exercise a free control over our concep- 
tions. We can create out of them, as simple elements, the 
manifold mental shapes which we do not treat as given to us, 
but as essentially our own work. In Pedagogics, we must not 
only look upon this freedom as if it were only to afford gra- 
tification, but as the reaction of the absolute ideal native 
mind against the dependence in which the empirical recep- 
tion of impressions from without, and their reproduction in 
conceptions, place it. In this process, it does not only fash- 
ion in itself the phenomenal world, but it rather fashions out 
of itself a world which is all its own. 

§ 94. The study of Art comes here to the aid of Pedagogics, 
especially with Poetry, the highest and at the same time the 
most easily communicated. The imagination of the pupil 
can be led by means of the classical works of creative ima- 
gination to the formation of a good taste both as regards 
ethical value and beanty of form. The proper classical works 
for youth are those which nations have produced in the earli- 
est stages of their culture. These works bring children face 
to face with the picture which mind has sketched for itself in 
one of the necessary stages of its development. This is the 
real reason why our children never weary of reading Homer 
and the stories of the Old Testament. Polytheism and the 
heroism which belongs to it are just as substantial an element 
of cliildisli conception as monotheism with its prophets and 
patriarchs. We stand beyond both, because we are medi- 
ated by both, and embrace both in our stand-point. 

— The purest stories of literature designed for the amuse- 



Tlie Imaginative BpocJi. 43 

ment of cliildren from their seventh to their fourteenth year, 
consist always of those which were honored by nations and 
the world at large. One has only to notice in how many 
thousand forms the stories of Ulysses are reproduced by 
the writers of children's tales. Becker's " Tales of Ancient 
Times," Gustav Schwab's most admirable "Sagas of Antiqui- 
ty," Karl Grimm's "Tales of Olden Times," &c., what were 
they without the well-talking, wily favorite of Pallas, and 
the divine swine-herd? And just as indestructible are the 
stories of the Old Testament up to the separation of Judah 
and Israel. These patriarchs with their wives and children, 
these judges and prophets, these kings and priests, are by no 
means ideals of virtue in the notion of our modern lifeless 
morality, which would smooth out of its pattern- stories for 
the "dear children" everything that is hard and uncouth. 
For the very reason that the shadow-side is not wanting here, 
and that we find Qnvj^ vanity, evil desire, ingratitude, crafti- 
ness, and deceit, among tliese fathers of the race and leaders 
of "God's chosen people," have these stories so great an 
educational value. Adam, Cain, Abraham, Joseph, Samson, 
and David, have justly become as trilly world-historical types 
as Achilles and Patroclus, Agamemnon and Iphigenia, Hec- 
tor and Andromache, Ulysses and Penelope. — 

§ 95. There may be produced also, out of the simplest and 
most primitive phases of different epochs of culture of one 
and the same people, stories which answer to the imagination 
of children, and represent to them the characteristic features 
of the past of their people. 

— The Germans possess such a collection of their stories in 
their popular books of the "Horny Sigfried," of the "Heymon 
Children," of "Beautiful Magelone,'' " Fortunatus," "The 
Wandering Jew," "Faust," "The Adventurous Simpliclssi- 
mus," "The Scliildhurger,-'' "The Island of Felsenburg," 
"Lienhard and Gertrude," &c. Also, the art works of the 
great masters which possess national significance must be 
spoken of here, as the Don Quixote of Cervantes. — 

§ 96. The most general form in which the childish imagin- 
ation finds exercise is that of fairy-tales ; but Education must 
take care that it has these in their proper shape as national 
productions, and that they are not of the morbid kind 



44 The Imaginative Eyocli. 

wliicli poetry so often gives us in this species of literature, 
and which not seldom degenerate to sentimental caricatures 
and silliness. 

— The East Indian stories are most excellent because they 
have their origin with a childlike people who live wholly in 
the imagination. By means of the Arabian filtration, which 
took place in Cairo in the flourishing period of the Egyptian 
caliphs, all that was too characteristically Indian was ex- 
cluded, and they were made in the " Tales of Scheherezade," 
a book for all peoples, with whose far-reaching power in 
child-literature, the local stories of a race, as e.g. Grimm's 
admirable ones of German tradition, cannot compare. Fairy- 
tales made to order, as we often see them, with a medi^Bval 
Catholic tendency, or very moral and dry, are a bane to the 
youthful imagination in their stale sweetness. We must 
here add, however, that lately we have had some better suc- 
cess in our attempts since we have learned to distinguish 
between the naive natural poetry, which is without reflec- 
tion, and the poetry of art, which is conditioned by criti- 
cism and an ideal. This distinction has produced good fruits 
even in the picture-books of children. The pretensions 
of the gentlemen who printed illustrated books containing 
nothing more solid than the alphabet and the multiplication 
table have become less prominent since such men as Speck- 
ter, Frohlich, Gutsmuths, Hofman (the writer of " Slovenly 
Peter"), and others, have shown that seemingly trivial things 
can be handled with intellectual power, if one is blessed 
with it, and that nothing is more opposed to the child's 
imagination than the cMldisliness with which so many writers 
for children have fallen when they attempted to descend with 
dignity from their presumably lofty stand-point. Men are 
beginning to understand that Christ promised the kingdom 
of heaven to little children on other grounds than because 
they had as it were the privilege of being thoughtless and 
foolish. — 

§ 97. For youth and maidens, especially as they approach 
manhood and womanhood, the cultivation of the imagina- 
tion must allow the earnestness of actuality to manifest 
itself in its "undisguised energy. This earnestness, n,o longer 
through the symbolism of play but in its objective reality, 



TTi.e Imaginative Epoch. 45 

must now thoroughly penetrate the conceptions of the youth 
so that 'it shall prepare him to seize hold of the machinery of 
active life. Instead of the all-embracing Epos they should 
now read Tragedy, whose purifying process, through the 
alternation of fear and pity, unfolds to the youth the secret 
of all human destiny, sin and its expiation. The works best 
adapted to lead to history on this side are those of biogra- 
phy — of ancient times, Plutarch ; of modern times, the auto- 
biographies of Augustine, Cellini, Rousseau, Goethe, Yarnha- 
gen, Jung Stilling, Moritz Arndt, &c. These autobiographies 
contain a view of the growth of individuality through its 
inter-action with the influences of its time, and, together with 
the letters and memoirs of great or at least note-worthy men, 
tend to produce a healthy excitement in the youth, who must 
learn to light his own battles through a knowledge of the 
battles of others. To introduce the youth to a knowledge of 
Isfature and Ethnography no means are better than those of 
books of travel which give the charm of first contact, the joy 
of discovery, instead of the general consciousness of the con- 
quests of mind. 

— If educative literature on the one hand broadens the field 
of knowledge, on the other it may also promote its elabora- 
tion into ideal forms. This happens, in a strict sense, through 
philosophical literature. But only two difi'erent species of 
this are to be recommended to youth : (1) well-written trea- 
tises which endeavor to solve a single problem with spirit 
and thoroughness ; or, (2) when the intelligence has grown 
strong enough for it, the classical works of a real philoso- 
pher. German literature is fortunately very rich in treatises 
of this kind in the works of Lessing, Herder, Kant, Fichte, 
Schleiermacher, Humboldt, and Schiller. But nothing does 
more harm to youth than the study of works of mediocrity, 
or those of a still lower rank. They stupefy and narrow the 
mind by their empty, hollow, and constrained style. It is 
generally supposed that these standard works are too diffi- 
cult, and that one must first seize them in this trivial and 
diluted form in order to understand them. This is one of the 
most prevalent and most dangerous errors, for these Intro- 
ductions or Explanations, easily-comprehended Treatises, 
Summary Abstracts, are, because of their want of originality 



46 The Imaginative Epoch. 

and of the acuteness which belongs to it, much more difficult 
to understand than the standard work itself from which they 
drain their supplies. Education must train the youth to the 
courage which will attempt standard works, and it must not 
allow any such miserable preconceived opinions to grow -up 
in his mind as that his understanding is totally unable to 
comprehend works like Fichte's "Science of Knowledge," the 
" Metaphysics" of Aristotle, or Hegel's " Phenomenology." 
No science suffers so much as Philosophy from this false 
popular opinion, which understands neither itself nor its au- 
thority. The youth must learn how to learn to understand, 
and, in order to do this, he must know that one cannot imme- 
diately understand everything in its hnest subdivisions, and 
that on this account he must have patience, and must resolve 
to read over and over again, and to think over what he has 
read. — 

§ 98. (3) Imagination returns again within itself to per- 
ception in that it replaces, for conceptions, perceptions them- 
selves, which are to remind it of the previous conception. 
These perceptions may resemble in some way the perception 
which lies at the basis of the conception, and be thus more or 
less symbolical : or they may be merely arbitrary creations of 
the creative imagination, and are in this case pure signs. In 
common speech and writing, we call the free retaining of 
thesG perceptions created by imagination, and the recalling 
of the conceptions denoted by them. Memory. It is by no 
means a particular faculty of the mind, which is* again sub- 
divided into memory of persons, names, numbers, &c. As to 
its form, memory is the stage of the dissolution of concep- 
tion ; but as to its content, it arises from the interest which 
we take in a subject-matter. From this interest results, 
moreover, careful attention, and from this latter, facility in 
the reproductive imagination. If these acts have preceded, 
the fixing of a name, or of a number, in which the content in- 
teresting us is as it were summed up, is not difficult. When 
interest and attention animate us, it seems as if we did not 
need to be at all troubled about remembering anything. All 
the so-called mnemonic helps only serve to make more diffi- 
cult the act of memory. This act is in itself a double func- 
tion, consisting of, first, the fixing of the sign, and second, 



The Logical Epoch. 47 

the fixing of the conception subsumed under it. Since the 
mnemonic technique adds to thess one more conception, 
through whose means the things with which we have to deal 
are to be fixed in order to be able freely to express them in 
usj it trebles the functions of remembering, and forgets that 
the mediation of these and their relation — wholly arbitrary 
and highly artificial — must also be remembered. The true 
help of memory consists in not helping it at all, but in sim- 
ply taking up the object into the ideal regions of the mind 
by the force of the infinite self-determination which mind 
possesses. 

— Lists, of names, as e.g. of the Roman emperors, of the 
popes, of the caliphs, of rivers, mountains, authors, cities, 
&c. ; also numbers, as e.g. the multiplication table, the melt- 
ing points of minerals, the dates of battles, of births and 
deaths, &c., must be learned without aid. All indirect means 
only serve to do harm here, and are required as self-discov- 
ered mediation only in case that interest or attention has 
become weakened. — 

§ 99. The means to be used, which result from the nature 
of memory itself, are on the one hand the pronouncing and 
writing of the names and numbers, and on the other, repeti- 
tion ; by these we gain distinctness and certainty. 

— All artificial contrivances for quickening the memory 
vanish in comparison with the art of writing, in so far as 
this is not looked at as a means of relieving the memory. 
That a name or a number should be this or that, is a mere 
chance for the intelligence, an entirely meaningless accident 
to which we have unconditionally to submit ourselves as un- 
alterable. The intelligence must be accustomed to put upon 
itself this constraint. In science proper, especially in Phi- 
losophy, our reason helps to produce one thought from 
others by means of the context, and we can discover names 
for the ideas from them. — 

III. The Logical Epoch. 

% 100. In Conception there is attained a universality of 
intellectual action in so far as the empirical details are 
referred to a Schema^ as Kant called it. But the necessity 
of the connection is wanting to it. To produce this is the 



48 TTie Logical Epoch. 

task of the thinking activity, which frees itself from all rep- 
resentations, and with its clearly defined determinations 
transcends conceptions. The Thinking activity frees itself 
from all sensuous representations by means of the processes^ 
of Conception and Perception. Comprehension, Judgment,, 
and Syllogism, develop for themselves into forms which, as 
such, have no power of being perceived by the senses. But 
it does not follow. from this that he who thinks cannot return 
out of the thinking activity and carry it with him into the 
sphere of Conception and Perception. The true thinking ac- 
tivity deprives itself of no content. The abstraction affecting 
a logical purism which looks down upon Conce|)tion and 
Perception as forms of intelligence quite inferior to itself, is 
a pseudo-thinking, a morbid and scholastic error. Education 
will be the better on its guard against this the more it has 
led the pupil by the legitimate road of Perception and Con- 
ception to Thinking. Memorizing especially is an excellent 
preparatory school for the Thinking activity, because it 
gives practice to the intelligence in exercising itself in ab- 
stract ideas. 

§ 101. The fostering of the Sense of Truth from the earli- 
est years up, is the surest way of leading the pupil to gain 
the power of thinking. The unprejudiced, disinterested yield- 
ing to Truth, as well as the effort to shun all deception and 
false seeming, are of the greatest value in strengthening the 
power of reflection, as this considers nothing of value but the 
actually existing objective circumstances. 

— The indulging an illusion as a pleasing recreation of the 
intelligence should be allowed, while lying must not be 
tolerated. Children have a natural inclination for mystifica- 
tions, for masquerades, for raillery, and for theatrical per- 
formances, &c. This inclination to illusion is perfectly nor- 
mal with them, and should be permitted. The graceful king- 
dom of Art is developed from it, as also the poetry of conver- 
sation in jest and wit. Although this sometimes becomes 
stereotyped into very prosaic conventional forms of speech, 
it is more tolerable than the awkward honesty which takes 
everything in its simple literal sense. And it is easy to 
discover whether children in such play, in the activity of free 
joyousness, incline to the side of mischief by their showing 



The Logical Presupposition or Method. 49 

a desire of satisfying their selfish interest. Then they must 
be checked, for in that case the cheerfulness of harmless 
joking gives way to premeditation and dissimulation. — 

§ 102. An acquaintance with logical forms is to be recom- 
mended as a special educational help in the culture of intel- 
ligence. The study of Mathematics does not suffice, because 
it presupposes Logic. Mathematics is related to Logic in the 
same way as Grammar, the Physical Sciences, &c. The logi- 
cal forms must be known explicitly in their pure independent 
forms, and not merely in their implicit state as immanent in 
objective forms. 

SECOND CHAPTER. 

The Logical Presupposition or Method. 

§ 103. The logical presupposition of instruction is the order 
in which the subject-matter develops for the consciousness. 
The subject, the consciousness of the pupil, and the activity 
of the instructor, interpenetrate each other in instruction, 
and constitute in actuality one whole. 

§ 104. (1) First of all, the subject which is to be leaiaied 
has a specific determinateness which demands in its represen- 
tation a certain fixed order. However arbitrary we may de- 
sire to be, the subject has a certain self-determination of its 
own which no mistreatment can wholly crush out, and this 
inherent immortal reason is the general foundation of in- 
struction. 

— To illustrate; however one may desire to manipulate a 
language in teaching it, he cannot change the words in it, or 
the inflections of the declensions and conjugations. And the 
same restriction is laid upon our inclinations in the different 
divisions of Natural History, in the theorems of Arithmetic, 
Geometry, &c. The theorem of Pascal remains still the theo- 
rem of Pascal, and will always remain so. — 

§ 105. (2) But the subject must be adapted to the conscious- 
ness of the pupil, and here the order of procedure and the 
exposition depend upon the stage which he has reached in- 
tellectually, for the special manner of the instruction must 
be conditioned by this. If he is in the stage of perception, 
we must use the illustrative method; if in the stage of con- 
ception, that of combination ; and if in the stage of reflection 



50 Tlie Logical Presupposition or Method. 

that of demonstration. The first exhibits the object directly, 
or some representation of it; the second considers it accord- 
ing to the different possibilities which exist in it, and turns 
it around on all sides ; the third questions the necessity of the 
connection in which it stands either with itself or with others. 
This is the natural order from the stand-point of the scientific 
intelligence: first, the object is presented to the perception; 
then combination presents its different phases ; and, finally, 
the thinking activity circumscribes the restlessly moving re- 
flection by the idea of necessity. Experiment in the method 
of combination is an excellent means for a discovery of rela- 
tions, for a sharpening of the attention, for the arousing of a 
many-sided interest ; but it is no true dialectic, though it be 
often denoted by that name. 

— Illustration is especially necessary in the natural scien- 
ces and also in a3sthetics, because in both of these depart- 
ments the sensuous is an essential element of the matter dealt 
with. In this respect we have made great progress in charts 
and maps. Sydow's hand and wall maps and Berghaus's phy- 
sical atlas are most excellent means of illustrative instruc- 
tion ; also Burmeister's zoological atlas. — 

§ 106. The demonstrative method, in order to bring about 
its proof of necessity, has a choice of many different ways. 
But we must not imagine, either that there are an unlimited 
number, and that it is only a chance which one we shall take ; 
or that they have no connection among themselves, and run, 
as it were, side by side. It is not, however, the business of 
Pedagogics to develop different methods of proof; this be- 
longs to Logic. We have only to remember that, logically 
taken, proof must be analytic, synthetic, or dialectic. Analy- 
sis begins with the single one, and leads out of it by induc- 
tion to the general principle from which its existence results. 
Synthesis, on the contrary, begins with a general which is 
presupposed as true, and leads from this through deduction 
to the special determinations which were implicit in it. The 
regressive search of analysis for a determining principle is 
In'Gention ; the forward progress of synthesis from the sim- 
ple elements seeking for the multiplicity of the single one is 
Construction. Each, in its result, passes over into the other; 
but their truth is found in the dialectic method, which in each 



The Logical Presupposition or Method. 51 

phase allows unity to separate into diversity and diversity 
to return into unity. While in the analytic as well as in the 
synthetic method the mediation of the individual with the 
general, or of the general with the individual, lets the phase 
of particularity be only subjectively connected with it iu 
the dialectic method, we have the going over of the general 
through the particular to the individual, or to the self-deter- 
mination of the idea, and it therefore rightly claims the title 
of the genetic method. We can also say that while the inven- 
tive method gives us the idea (notion) and the constructive 
the judgment, the genetic gives us the syllogism which leads 
the determinations of reflection back again into substantial 
identity. 

§ 107.^ (3) The active mediation of the pupil with the con- 
tent which is to be impressed upon his consciousness is the 
work of the teacher, whose personality creates a method 
adapted to the individual; for however clearly the subject 
may be defined, however exactly the psychological stage of 
the pupil may be regulated, the teacher cannot dispense with 
the power of his own individuality even in the most objective 
relations. This individuality must penetrate the whole with 
its own exposition, and that peculiarity which we call his 
manner, and which cannot be determined a priori, must ap- 
pear. The teacher must place himself on the stand-point of 
the pupil, i.e. must adapt himself; he must see that the ab- 
stract is made clear to him in the concrete, i.e. must illus- 
trate ; he must fill up the gaps which will certainly appear, 
and which may mar the thorough seizing of the subject, i.e.' 
must supply. In all these relations the pedagogical tact of 
the teacher may prove itself truly ingenious in varying the 
method according to the changefulness of the ever-vaiying 
needs, in contracting or expanding the extent, in stating, or 
indicating what is to be supplied. The true teacher is free from 
any superstitious belief in any one procedure as a sure spe- 
cific which he follows always in a monotonous bondage. This 
can only happen when he is capable of the highest method. 
The teacher has arrived at the highest point of ability in 
teaching when he can make use of all means, from the loftiness 
of solemn seriousness, through smooth statement, to the play 
of jest— yes, even to the incentive of irony, and to humor. 



52 The Subjects of Instruction. 

— Pedagogics can be in nothing more specious than in its 
method, and it is here that charlatanism can most rea- 
dily intrude itself. Every little change, every inadequate 
modiiication, is proclaimed aloud as a new or an improved 
method; and even the most foolish and superficial changes 
find at once their imitators, v^^ho themselves conceal their in- 
solence behind some frivolous differences, and, vf\t\\ laugha- 
ble conceit, hail themselves as inventors. — 

THIRD CHAPTER. 

Instruction. 

§ 108. All instruction acts upon the supposition that there 
is an inequality between present knowledge and power and 
that knowledge and power which are not yet attained. To 
the pupil belong the first, to the teacher the second. Educa- 
tion is the act which gradually cancels the original inequal- 
ity of teacher and pupil, in that it converts what was at first 
the property of the former into the property of the latter, 
and this by means of his own activity. 

I. The Subjects of Instruction. 

§ 109. The pupil is the apprentice, the teacher the master, 
whether in the practice of any craft or art, or in the exposi- 
tion of any systematic knowledge. The pupil passes from 
the state of the apprentice to that of the master through 
that of the journeyman. The apprentice has to appropriate 
to himself the elements ; journey manship begins as he, by 
means of their possession, becomes independent; the master 
combines with his technical skill the freedom of production. 
His authority over his pupil consists only in his knowledge 
and power. If he has not these, no external support, no trick 
of false appearances which he may j)ut on, will serve to cre- 
ate it for him, 

§ 110. These stages — (1) apprenticeship, (2) journeyman- 
ship, (3) mastership — are fixed limitations in the didactic 
process ; they are relative only in the concrete. The stand- 
ard of special excellence varies with the different grades of 
culture, and must be varied that it may have any historical 
value. The master is complete only in relation to the jour- 
neyman and apprentice ; to them he is superior. But on the 



The Subjects of Instruction. 53 

other hand, in relation to the infinity of the problems of his 
art or science, he is by no means complete; to himself he 
must always appear as one who begins ever anew, one who 
is ever striving, one to whom a new problem ever rises from 
every achieved result. He cannot discharge himself from 
work, he must never desire to rest on his laurels. He is the 
truest master whose finished performances only force him on 
to never-resting progress. 

§ 111. The real possibility of culture is found in general, 
it is true, in every human being ; nevertheless, empirically, 
there are distinguished : (1) Incapacity, as the want of all 
gifts ; (2) Mediocrity ; (3) Talent and Genius. It is the part 
of Psychology to give an account of all these. Mediocrity 
characterizes the great mass of mechanical intelligences, 
those who wait for external impulse as to what direction 
their endeavors shall take. Not without truth, perhaps, may 
we say, that hypothetically a special talent is given to 
each individual, but this special talent in many men never 
makes its appearance, because under the circumstances in 
which it finds itself placed it fails to find the exciting occa- 
sion which shall give him the knowledge of its existence. 
The majority of mankind are contented with the mechanical 
impulse which makes them into something and impresses 
upon them certain determinations. — Talent shows itself by 
means of the confidence in its own especial productive possi- 
bility, which manifests itself as an inclination, as a strong 
impulse, to occupy itself with the special object which con- 
stitutes its content. Pedagogics has no difiiculty in dealing 
with mechanical natures, because their passivity is only 
too ready to follow prescribed patterns. It is more difficult 
to manage talent, because it lies between mediocrity and 
genius, and is therefore uncertain, and not only unequal to 
itself, but also is tossed now too low, now too high, is by 
turns despondent and over-excited. The general maxim for 
dealing with it is to remove no difiiculty from the subject 
to which its eff'orts are directed. — Genius must be treated 
much in the same way as Talent. The difference con- 
sists only in this, that Genius, with a foreknowledge of its 
creative power, usually manifests its confidence with less 
doubt in a special vocation, and, with a more intense thirst 



54 ' The Subjects of Instruction. 

for culture, subjects itself more willingly to the demands of 
instruction. Genius is in its nature the purest self-determin- 
ation, in that it lives, in its own inner existence, the necessity 
which exists in the thing. But it can assign to the New, which 
is in it already immediately and subjectively, no value if this 
has not united itself to the already existing culture as its 
objective presupposition, and on this ground it thankfully 
receives instruction. 

§ 112. But Talent and Genius offer a special difficulty to 
education in the precocity which often accompanies them. 
But by precocity we do not mean that they early render 
themselves perceptible, since the early manifestation of gifts 
by talent and genius, through their intense confidence, is 
to be looked at as perfectly legitimate. But precocity is 
rather the hastening forward of the human being in feeling 
and moral sense, so that where in the ordinary course of na- 
ture we should have a child, we have a youth, and a man in 
the place of a youth. We may find precocity among those 
who belong to the class of mediocrity, but it is developed 
most readily among those possessed of: talent and genius, be- 
cause with them the early appearance of superior gifts may 
very easily bring in its train a perversion of the feelings and 
the moral nature. Education must deal with it in so far as 
it is inharmonious, so that it shall be stronger than the de- 
mands made on it from without, so that it shall not minister 
to vanity ; and must take care, in order to accomplish this, 
that social naturalness and lack of affectation be preserved 
in the pupil. 

— Our age has to combat this precocity much more than 
others. We find e.g. authors who, at the age of thirty years, 
in which they publish their collected works or write their 
biography, are chilly with the feelings of old age. Music lias 
been the sphere in which the earliest development of talent 
has shown itself, and here we find the absurdity that the 
cupidity of parents has so forced precocious talents that chil- 
dren of four or five years of age have been made to appear 
in public. — 

§ 118. Every sphere of culture contains a certain quantity 
of knowledge and ready skill which may be looked at, as it 
were, as the created result of the culture. It is to be wished 



The Subjects of Instruction. 55 

that every one who turns his attention to a certain line of 
culture could take up into himself the gathered learning which 
controls it. In so far as he does this, he is professional. The 
consciousness that one has in the usual way gone through a 
school of art or science, and has, with the general inheritance 
of acquisition, been handed over to a special department, cre- 
ates externally a beneficial composure which is very favor- 
able to internal progress. We must distinguish from the 
professional the amateur and the self-taught man. The ama- 
teur busies himself with an art, a science, or a trade, without 
having gone through any strict training in it. As a rule, he 
dispenses with elementary thoroughness, and hastens towards 
the pleasure which the joy of production gives. The conscious 
amateur confesses this himself, makes no pretension to mas- 
tership, and calls himself — in distinction from the profes- 
sional, who subjects himself to rules — an unlearned person. 
But sometimes the amateur, on the contrary, covers over his 
weakness, cherishes in himself the self-conceit that he is 
equal to the heroes of his art or science, constitutes himself 
the first admirer of his own performances, seeks for their want 
of recognition in external motives, never in their own want 
of excellence ; and, if he has money, or edits a paper, is in- 
toxicated with being the patron of talent which produces 
such works as he would willingly produce or pretends to pro- 
duce. The self-taught man has often true talent, or even ge- 
nius, to whose development nevertheless the inherited culture 
has been denied, and who by good fortune has through his 
own strength worked his way into a field of effort. The self- 
taught man is distinguished from the amateur by the thor- 
oughness and the industry with which he acts ; he is not only 
equally unfortunate with him in the absence of school-train- 
ing, but is much less endowed. Even if the self-taught man 
has for years studied and practised much, he is still haunted 
by a feeling of uncertainty as to whether he has yet reached 
the stand-point at which a science, an art, or a trade, will re- 
ceive him publicly — of so very great consequence is it that 
man should be comprehended and recognized by man. The 
self-taught man therefore remains embarrassed, and does not 
free himself from the apprehension that he may expose some 
weak point to a professional, or he falls into the other ex- 



56 TTie Act of Learning. 

treme — lie becomes presumptuous, steps forth as a reformer, 
and, if he accomplishes nothing, or earns only ridicule, he 
sets himself down as an unrecognized martyr by an unappre- 
ciative and unjust world. 

— It is possible that the amateur may transcend the stage 
of superficiality and subject himself to a thorough training; 
then he ceases to be an amateur. It is also possible that the 
self-taught man may be on the right track, and may accom- 
plish as much or even more than one trained in the usual 
wa}^. In general, however, it is very desirable that every one 
should go through the regular course of the inherited means 
of education, partly that he may be thorough in the elements, 
partly to free him from the anxiety which he may feel lest 
he in his solitary efforts spend labor on some superfluous 
work — superfluous because done long before, and of which he, 
through the accident of his want of culture, had not heard. 
We must all learn by ourselves, but we cannot teach our- 
selves. Only Genius can do this, for it must be its own leader 
in the new paths which it opens. Genius alone passes beyond 
where inherited culture ceases. It bears this in itself as of 
the past, and which it uses as material for its new creation ; 
but the self-taught man, who would very willingly be a ge- 
nius, puts himself in an attitude of op^Dosition to things 
already accomplished, or sinks into oddity, into secret arts 
and sciences, &c. — 

§ 114. These ideas of the general steps of culture, of spe- 
cial gifts, and of the ways of culture appropriate to each, 
which we have above distinguished, have a manifold connec- 
tion among themselves which cannot be established d priori. 
We can however remark that Apprenticeship, the Mechanical 
Intelligence, and the Professional life ; secondly, Journey- 
manship. Talent, and Amateurship ; and, finally. Mastership, 
Genius, and Self-Education, have a relationship to each other, 

II. The Act of Learning. 

§ 115. In the process of education the interaction between 
pupil and teacher must be so managed that the exposition by 
the teacher shall excite in the pupil the impulse to reproduc- 
tion. The teacher must not treat his exposition as if it were 
a work of art which is its own end and aim, but he must al- 



The Act of Learning. 57 

ways bear in mind the need of the pupil. The artistic expo- 
sition, as such, will, by its completeness, produce admiration ; 
but the didactic, on the contrary, will, through its perfect 
adaptation, call out the imitative instinct, the power of new 
creation. 

— From this consideration we may justify the frequent 
statement that is made, that teachers who have really an ele- 
gant diction do not really accomplish so much as others who 
resemble in their statements not so much a canal flowing 
smoothly between straight banks, as a river which works its 
foaming way over rocks and between ever-winding banks. 
The pupil perceives that the first is considering himself 
when he speaks so finely, perhaps not without some self- 
appreciation ; and that the second, in the repetitions and the 
sentences which are never finished, is concerning himself 
solely with Mm. The pupil feels that not want of facility or 
awkwardness, but the earnest eagerness o£ the teacher., is the 
principal thing, and that this latter uses rhetoric only as a 
means. — 

§ 116. In the act of learning there appears (1) a mechanical 
element, (2) a dynamic element, and (3) one in which the 
dynamic again mechanically strengthens itself. 

§ 117. As to the mechanical element, the right time must 
be chosen for each lesson, an exact arrangement observed, 
and the suitable apparatus, which is necessary, procured. It 
is in the arrangement that especially consists the educational 
power of the lesson. The spirit of scrupulousness, of accu- 
racy, of neatness, is developed by the external technique, 
which is carefully arranged in its subordinate parts accord- 
ing to its content. The teacher must therefore insist upon it 
that work shall cease at the exact time, that the work be well 
done, &c., for on these little things many greater things eth- 
ically depend. 

— To choose one's time for any work is often difficult 
because of the pressure of a multitude of demands, but in 
general it should be determined that the strongest and keen- 
est energy of the thinkin'g activity and of memory — this being 
demanded by the work — should have appropriated to it the 
first half of the day. — 

§ 118. The dynamical element consists of the previously 



58 The Act of Learning. 

developed power of Attention, without which all the exposi- 
tion made by the teacher to the pupil remains entirely for- 
eign to him, all apparatus is dead, all arrangement of no 
avail, all teaching fruitless, if the pupil does not by his free 
activity receive into his inner self what one teaches him, and 
thus make it his own property. 

§ 119. This appropriation must not limit itself, however, to 
the first acquisition of any knowledge or skill, but it must 
give free existence to w^hatever the pupil has learned ; it must 
make it perfectly manageable and natural, so that it shall 
appear to be a part of himself. This must be brought about 
by means of Repetition. This will mechanically secure that 
which the attention first grasped. 

§ 120. The careful, persistent, living activit}^ of the pupil 
in these acts we call Industry. Its negative extreme is Lazi- 
ness, which is deserving of punishment inasmuch as it passes 
over into a want of self-determination. Man is by nature lazy; 
But mind, which is only in its act, must resolve upon ac- 
tivity. This connection of Industry with human freedom, 
with the very essence of mind, makes laziness appear blame- 
worthy. The really civilized man, therefore, no longer knows 
tliat absolute inaction which is the greatest enjoyment to the 
barbarian, and he fills up his leisure with a variety of easier 
and lighter work. The positive extreme of Industry is the 
unreasonable activity which rushes in breathless chase from 
one action to another, from this to that, straining the person 
with the immense quantity of his work. Such an activity, 
going bej^ond itself and seldom reaching deliberation, is un- 
worthy of a man. It destroys the agreeable quiet which in 
all industry should penetrate and inspire the deed. Nothing 
is more repulsive than the beggarly pride of such stupid la- 
boriousness. One should not endure for a moment to have 
the pupil, seeking for distinction, begin to pride himself on an 
extra industry. Education must accustom him to use a regu- 
lar assiduity. The frame of mind suitable for work often 
does not exist at the time when work should begin, but more 
frequently it makes its appearance after we have begun. The 
subject takes its own time to awaken us. Industry, inspired 
by a love and regard for work, has in its quiet uniformity a 
great force, without which no one can accomplish anything 



Tlie Act of Learning. 59 

essential. The world, therefore, holds Industry worthy of 
honor ; and to the Romans, a nation of the most persistent 
perseverance, we owe the inspiring words, " Incepto tantum 
opus est, ccetera res exyedieV ; and, " Labor improhus omnia 
xincity 

— "Every one may glory in his industry!" This is a true 
word from the lips of a truly industrious man, who was also 
one of the most modest. But Lessing did not, however, mean 
by them to charter Pharisaical pedantry. The necessity 
sometimes of giving one's self to an excess of work injurious 
to the health, generally arises from the fact that he has not 
at other times made use of the requisite attention to the ne- 
cessary industry, and then attempts suddenly and as by a 
forced march to storm his way to his end. The result of such 
•over-exertion is naturally entire prostration. The pupil is 
therefore to be accustomed to a generally uniform industry, 
which may extend itself at regular intervals without his 
thereby overstraining himself. What is really gained by a 
young man who has hitherto neglected time and opportu- 
nity, and who, when examination presses, overworks him- 
self, perhaps standing the test with honor, and then must 
rest for months afterwards from the over-effort ? On all such 
occasions attention is not objective and dispassionate, but 
rather becomes, through anxiety to pass the examination, 
restless and corrupted by egotism ; and the usual evil result 
of such compulsory industrj^ is the ephemeral character of 
the knowledge thus gained. "Lightly come, lightly go," 
says the proverb. 

— A special worth is always attached to study far into the 
night. The student's "midnight lamp" always claims for itself 
a certain veneration. But this is vanity. In the first place, it 
is injurious to contradict Nature by working through the 
night, which she has ordained for sleep ; secondly, the ques- 
tion is not as to the number of hours spent in work and their 
position in the twenty-four, but as to the quality of the work. 
With regard to the value of my work, it is of no moment 
whatsoever whether I have done it it in the morning or in the 
evening, or how long I have labored, and it is of no conse- 
quence to any one except to my own very unimportant self. 



60 The Act of Learning. 

Finally, the question presents itself whether these gentlemen 
who boast so much of their midnight work do not sleep in 
the daytime ! — 

§ 121. But Industry has also two other extremes : seeming- 
laziness and seeming-industry. Seeming-laziness is the neg- 
lecting of the usual activity in one department because a man 
is so much more active in another. The mind possessed with 
the liveliest interest in one subject buries itself in it, and, be- 
cause of this, cannot give itself up to another which before 
had engrossed the attention. Thus it appears more idle than 
it is, or rather it appears to be idle just becuse it is more in- 
dustrious. This is especially the case in passing from one 
subject of instruction to another. The pupil should acquire 
such a flexibility in his intellectual powers that the rapid 
relinquishment of one subject and the taking up of another 
should not be too difficult. Nothing is more natural than 
that when he is excited he should go back to the subject that 
has just been presented to liim, and that he, feeling himself 
restrained, shall remain untouched by the following lesson, 
which may be of an entirely diff'erent nature. The young 
soul is brooding over what has been said, and is really ex- 
ercising an intensive activity, though it appears to be idle. 
But in seeming-industry all the external motives of activity, 
all the mechanism of work, manifest themselves noisily, while 
there is no true energy of attention and productivity. One 
busies himself with all the apparatus of work; he heaps up 
instruments and books around him ; he sketches plans ; he 
spends many hours staring into vacancy, biting his pen, 
gazing at words, drawings, numbers, &c. Boys, under the 
protection of so great a scaffolding for work erected around 
them, often carry on their own amusements. Men, who ar- 
rive at no real concentration of their force, no clear defining 
of their vocation, no firm decision as to their action, dissipate 
their power in what is too often a great activity with abso- 
lutely no result. They are busy, very busy ; they have hard- 
ly time to do this thing because they really wish or ought to 
do that ; but, with all their driving, their energy is all dissi- 
pated, and nothing comes from their countless labors. 



The Modality of the Process of Teaching. 61 

III. The 3Iodality of the Process of Teaching. 

§ 122. Now that we have learned something of the relation 
of the teacher to the taught, and of the process of learning 
itself, we must examine the mode and manner of instruction. 
This may have (1) the character of contingency: the way in 
which our immediate existence in the world, our life, teaches 
us ; or it may be given (2) by the printed page ; or (3) it may 
take the shape of formal oral instruction. 

§ 123. (1) For the most, the best, and the mightiest things 
that we know we are indebted to Life itself. The sum of per- 
ceptions which a human being absorbs into himself up to the 
fourth or fifth year of his life is incalculable ; and after this 
time we involuntarily gain by immediate contact with the 
world countless ideas. But especially we understand by the 
phrase " the School of Life," the ethical knowlege which we 
gain by what happens in our own lives. 

— If one says, Vitce non scholcs discendum est., one can 
also say. Vita docet. Without the power exercised by the 
immediate world our intelligence would remain abstract and 
lifeless. — 

§ 124. (2) What we learn through books is the opposite of 
that which we learn through living. Life forces upon us the 
knowledge it has to give; the book, on the contrary, is en- 
tirely passive. It is locked up in itself; it cannot be altered ; 
but it waits by us till we wish to use it. We can read it ra- 
pidly or slowly ; we can simply turn over its leaves — what in 
modern times one calls reading ; — we can read it from begin- 
ning to end or from end to beginning ; we can stop, begin 
again, skip over passages, or cut them short, as we like. To 
this extent the book is the most convenient means for instruc- 
tion. If we are indebted to Life for our perceptions, we must 
chietiy thank books for our understanding of our perceptions. 
We call book-instruction "dead" when it lacks, for the expo- 
sition which it gives, a foundation in our perceptions, or when 
we do not add to the printed description the perceptions 
which it implies ; and the two are quite difterent. 

§ 125. Books, as well as life, teach us many things which 
we did not previously intend to learn directly from them. 
From foreign romances e.g. we learn, first of all, while we 
read them for entertainment, the foreign language, history 



62 The Modality of the Process of Teaching. 

or geography, &c. We must distinguish from such books 
as those which bring to us, as it were accidentally, a knowl- 
edge for which we were not seeking, the books which are 
expressly intended to instruct. These must {a) in their con- 
sideration of the subject give us the principal results of any 
department of knowledge, and denote the points from which 
the next advance must be made, because every science arises 
at certain results which are themselves again new problems ; 
(5) in the consideration of the particulars it must be exhaust- 
ive, i.e. no essential elements of a science must be omitted. 
But this exhaustiveness of execution has different meanings 
according to the stand-points of those for whom it is made. 
How far we shall pass from the universality of the principal 
determinations into the multiplicity of the Particular, into 
the fulness of detail, cannot be definitely determined, and 
must vary, according to the aim of the book, as to whether 
it is intended for the apprentice, the journeyman, or the mas- 
ter; (c) the expression must be precise, i.e. the maximum of 
clearness must be combined with the maximum of brevity. 

— The writing of a text-book is on this account one of the 
most difficult tasks, and it can be successfully accomplished 
only by those who are masters in a science or art, and who 
combine with great culture and talent great experience as 
teachers. Unfortunately many dabblers in knowledge under- 
value the difficulty of writing text-books because they think 
that they are called upon to aid in the spread of science, and 
because the writing of compendiums has thus come to be an 
avocation, so that authors and publishers have made out of 
text-books a profitable business and good incomes. In all 
sciences and arts there exists a quantity of material which 
is common property, which is disposed of now in one way, 
now in another. The majority of compendiums can be dis- 
tinguished from each other only by the kind of paper, print- 
ing, the name of the publisher or bookseller, or by arbitrary 
changes in the arrangement and execution. The want of 
principle with which this work is carried on is incredible. 
Many governments have on this account fixed prices for text- 
books, and commissioners to select them. This in itself is 
right and proper, but the use of any book should be left op- 
tional, so that the one-sidedness of a science patronized by 



The Modality of the Process of Teaching. 63 

government as it were patented, may not be created through 
the pressure of such introduction. A state may through its 
censorship oppose poor text-books, and recommend good 
ones; but it may not establish as it were a state-science, a 
state-art, in which only the ideas, laws and forms sanctioned 
by it shall be allowed. The Germans are fortunate, in con- 
sequence of their philosophical criticism, in the production of 
better and better text-books, among which may be mentioned 
Koberstein's, Gervinus', and Vilmar's Histories of Litera- 
ture, Ellendt's General History, Blumenbach's and Burmeis- 
ter's Natural History, Marheineke's text-book on Religion, 
Schwegler's History of Philosoj)hy, &c. So much the more 
unaccountable is it that, with such excellent books, the evil 
of such characterless books, partly inadequate and partly in 
poor style, should still exist when there is no necessity for it. 
The common style of paragraph-writing has become obnox- 
ious, under the name of Compendium-style, as the most stiff 
and affected style of writing. — 

§ 126. A text-book must be differently written according 
as it is intended for a book for private study or for purposes 
of general circulation. If the lirst, it must give more, and 
must develop more clearly the internal relations ; if the se- 
cond, it should be shorter, and proceed from axiomatic and 
clear postulates to their signification, and these must have 
an epigrammatic pureness which should leave something to 
be guessed. Because for these a commentary is needed which 
it is the teacher's duty to supply, such a sketch is usually 
accompanied by the fuller text- book which was arranged 
for private study. 

— It is the custom to call the proper text-book the " small" 
one, and that which explains and illustrates, the "large" 
one. Thus we have the Small and the Large Gervinus, &c. — 

§ 127. (3) The text-book which presupposes oral explana- 
tion forms the transition to Oral instruction itself. Since 
speech is the natural and original form in which mind mani- 
fests ilself, no book can rival it. The living word is the most 
powerful agent of instruction. However common and cheap 
printing may have rendered books as the most convenient 
means of education — however possible may have become, 
through the multiplication of facilities for intercourse and 



64 Tlie Modality of the Process of Teaching. 

the rapidity of transportation, the immediate viewing of hu- 
man life, the most forcible educational means, nevertheless 
the living word still asserts its supremacy. In two cases 
especially is it indispensable : one is when some knowledge 
is to be communicated which as yet is found in no compen- 
dium, and the other when a living language is to be taught, 
for in this case the printed page is entirely inadequate. One 
can learn from books to understand Spanish, French, English, 
Danish, &c., but not to speak them; to do this he must hear 
them, partly that his ear may become accustomed to the 
sounds, partly that his vocal organs may learn correctly to 
imitate them. 

§ 128, Life surprises and overpowers us with the knowl- 
edge which it gains ; the book, impassive, waits our conveni- 
ence ; the teacher, superior to us, perfectly prepared in com- 
parison with us, consults our necessity, and with his living 
speech uses a gentle force to which we can yield without 
losing our freedom. Listening is easier than reading. 

— Sovereigns e.g. seldom read themselves, but have ser- 
vants who read to them. — 

§ 129. Oral instruction may (1) give the subject, which is 
to be learned, in a connected statement, or (2) it may unfold 
it by means of question and answer. The first decidedly pre- 
supposes the theoretical inequality of the teacher and the 
taught. Because one can speak while many can listen, this 
is especially adapted to the instruction of large numbers. 
The second method is either that of the catechism or the dia- 
logue. The catechetical is connected with the first kind of 
oral instruction above designated because it makes demand 
upon- the memory of the learner only for the answer to one 
question at a time, and is hence very often and very absurdly 
called the Socratic method. In teaching by means of the dia- 
logue, we try, by means of a reciprocal interchange of thought, 
to solve in common some problem, proceeding according to the 
necessary forms of reason. But in this we can make a dis- 
tinction. One speaker may be superior to the rest, may hold 
in his own hand the thread of the conversation and may guide 
it himself; or, those who mingle in it may be perfectly equal 
in intellect and culture, and may each take part in the devel- 
opment with equal independence. In this latter case, this 



The Modality of the Process of Teaching. 65 

true reciprocity gives us the proper dramatic dialogue, which 
contains in itself all forms of exposition, and may pass 
from narration, description, and analysis, through satire and 
irony, to veritable humor. When it does this, the dialogue 
is the loftiest result of intelligence and the means of its pur- 
est enjoyment. 

— This alternate teaching, in which the one who has been 
taught takes the teacher's place, can be used only where 
there is a content which admits of a mechanical treatment. 
The Hindoos made use of it in very ancient times. Bell and 
Lancaster have transplanted it for the teaching of poor chil- 
dren in Europe and America. For the teaching of the con- 
ventionalities — reading, writing, and arithmetic — as well as 
for the learning by heart of names, sentences, &c., it suffices, 
but not for any scientific culture. Where we have large num- 
bers to instruct, the giving of the inWy developed statement 
(the first form) is necessary, since the dialogue, though it may 
be elsewhere suitable, allows only a few to take part in it. 
And if we take the second form, we must, if we have a large 
number of pupils, make use of the catechetical method only. 
What is known as the conversational method has been some- 
times suggested for our university instruction. Diesterweg in 
Berlin insists upon it. Here and there the attempt has been 
made, but without any result. In the university, the lecture 
of the teacher as a self-developing whole is contrasted with 
the scientific discussion of the students, in which they as 
equals work over with perfect freedom what they have heard. 
Diesterweg was wrong in considering the lecture-system as 
the principal cause of the lack of scientific interest which he 
thought he perceived in our universities. Kant, Fichte, Schel- 
ling, Schleiermacher, Wolf, Niebuhr, &c., taught by lectures 
and awakened the liveliest enthusiasm. But Diesterweg is 
quite right in saying that the students should not be de- 
graded to writing-machines. But this is generally conceded, 
and a pedantic amount of copying more and more begins to 
be considered as out of date at our universities. Neverthe- 
less, a new pedantry, that of the wholly extempore lecture, 
should not be introduced ; but a brief summary of the ex- 
tempore unfolding of the lecture may be dictated and serve a 
very important purpose, or the lecture may be copied. The 
6 



66 The Modality of the Process of TeacMng. 

great eflficacy of the oral exposition does not so much consist 
in the fact that it is perfectly free, as that it presents to im- 
mediate view a person who has made himself the bearer of a 
science or an art, and has found what constitutes its essence. 
Its power springs, above all, from the genuineness of the 
lecture, the originality of its content, and the elegance of its 
form : whether it is written or extemporized, is a matter of 
little moment. Niebuhr e.g. read, word for word, from his 
manuscript, and what a teacher was he ! — The catechetical 
way of teaching is not demanded at the university except in 
special examinations ; it belongs to the private work of the 
student, who must learn to be industrious of his own free 
impulse. The private tutor can best conduct reviews. — The 
institution which presupposing the lecture-system combines 
in itself original production with criticism, and the connected 
exposition with the conversation, is the seminary. It pur- 
sues a well-defined path, and confines itself to a small circle 
of associates whose grades of culture are very nearly the 
same. Here, therefore, can the dialogue be strongly devel- 
oped because it has a fixed foundation, and each one can 
take part in the conversation ; whereas, from the variety of 
opinions among a great number, it is easily perverted into 
an aimless talk, and the majorit}^ of the hearers, who have 
no chance to speak, become weary. — 

§ 130. As to the way in which the lecture is carried out, it 
may be so arranged as to give the whole stock of information 
acquired, or, without being so exact and so complete, it may 
bring to its elucidation only a relatively inexact and general 
information. The ancients called the first method the eso- 
teric and the second the exoteric, as we give to such lectures 
now, respectively, the names scholastic and popular. The 
first makes use of terms which have become technical in 
science or art, and proceeds syllogistically to combine the 
isolated ideas ; the second endeavors to substitute for techni- 
calities generally understood signs, and conceals the exact- 
ness of the formal conclusion by means of a conversational 
style. It is possible to conceive of a perfectly methodical 
treatment of a science which at the same time shall be gen- 
erally comprehensible if it strives to attain the transparency 
of real beauty. A scientific work of art may be correctly said 



Tlie Modality of the Process of Teacliimj. 67 

to be popular, as e.g. has happened to Herder's Ideas on the 
Philosophy of the History of Mojiikind. 

— Beaut}^ is the element which is comprehended by all, 
and as we declare our enmity to the distorted picture-books, 
books of amusement, and to the mischievous character of 
" Compendiums," so we must also oppose the popular pub- 
lications which style themselves Science made Easy, &c., 
in order to attract more purchasers by this alluring title. 
Kant in his Logic calls the extreme of explanation Pedantry 
and Gallantry. This last expression would be very charac- 
teristic in our times, since one attains the height of popula- 
rity now if he makes himself easily intelligible to ladies — a 
didactic triumph which one attains only by omitting every- 
thing that is profound or complicated, and saying only what 
exists already in the consciousness of every one, by depriv- 
ing the subject dealt with of all seriousness, and sparing 
neither pictures, anecdotes, jokes, nor pretty formalities of 
speech. Elsewhere Kant says : "In the effort to produce in 
our knowledge the completeness of scholarly thoroughness, 
and at the same time a popular character, without in the 
effort falling into the above-mentioned errors of an affected 
thoroughness or an affected popularity, we must, lirst of all, 
look out for the scholarly completeness of our scientific 
knowledge, the methodical form of thoroughness, and first 
ask how we can make really popular the knowledge method- 
ically acquired at school, i.e. how we can make it easy and 
generally communicable, and yet at the same time not sup- 
plant thoroughness by popularity. For scholarly complete- 
ness must not be sacrificed to popularity to please the peo- 
ple, unless science is to become a plaything or trifling." It is 
perfectly plain that all that was said before of the psycho- 
logical and the logical methods must be taken into account 
in the manner of the statement. — 

§ 131. It has been already remarked (§ 21), in speaking of 
the nature of education, that the office of the instructor must 
necessarily vary with the growing culture. But attention 
must here again be called to the fact, that education, in what- 
ever stage of culture, must conform to the law which, as the 
internal logic of Being, determines all objective developments 
of nature and of history. The Family gives the child liis first 



68 Tlie Modality of the Process of Teacldng. 

instruction ; between this and tlie school comes the teaching 
of the tutor; the school stands independently as the antithe- 
sis of the family, and presents three essentially different 
forms according as it imparts a general preparatory instruc- 
tion, or special teaching for different callings, or a universal 
scientific cultivation. Universality j^asses over through par- 
ticularizing into individuality, v^hich contains both the gen- 
eral and the particular freely in itself. All citizens of a state 
should have (1) a general education which {a) makes them 
familiar with reading, writing, and arithmetic, these being 
the means of all theoretical culture ; then {h) hands over to 
them a picture of the world in its principal phases, so that 
they as citizens of the world can find their proper status on 
our planet; and, finally, it must (c) int^truct him in the his- 
tory of his own state, so that he may see that the circumstan- 
ces in which he lives are the result of a determined past in 
its connection with the history of the rest of the world, and 
so may learn rightly to estimate the interests of his own coun- 
try in view of their necessary relation to the future. This 
work the elementary schools have to perform. From this, 
through the Realschule (our scientific High School course) they 
pass into the school where some particular branch of science 
is taught, and through the Gymnasium (classical course of a 
High School or College) to the University. From its general 
basis develop (2) the educational institutions that work tow- 
ards some special education which leads over to the exercise 
of some art. These we call Technological schools, where one 
may learn farming, mining, a craft, a trade, navigation, war, 
&c. This kind of education may be specialized indefinitely 
with the growth of culture, because any one branch is capa- 
ble in its negative aspect of such educational separation, as 
e.g. in foundling hospitals and orphan asylums, in blind and 
deaf and dumb institutions. The abstract universality of 
the Elementary school and the one-sided particularity of the 
Technological school, however, is subsumed under a concrete 
universality, which, without aiming directly at utility, treats 
science and art on all sides as their own end and aim. Sci- 
entia est potentca, said Lord Bacon. Practical utility results 
indirectly through the progress which Scientific Cognition 
makes in this free attitude, because it collects itself out of 



TTie Modality of the Process of Teaching. 69 

the dissipation throiigli manifold details into a universal 
idea and attains a profounder insight thereby. This organ- 
ism for the purpose of instruction is properl}^ called a Uni- 
versity. By it the educational organization is perfected. 

— It is essentially seen that no more than these three types 
of schools can exist, and that they must all exist in a per- 
fectly organized civilization. Their titles and the plan of 
their special teaching may be very different among different 
nations and at different times, but this need not prevent the 
recognition in them of the ideas which determine them. Still 
less should the imperfect ways in which they manifest them- 
selves induce us to condemn them. It is the modern tendency 
to undervalue the University as an institution which we had 
inherited from the middle ages, and with which we could at 
present dispense. This is an error. The university presents 
just as necessary a form of instruction as the elementary 
school or the technological school. Not the abolition of the 
university, but a reform which shall adapt it to the spirit of 
the age, is the advance which we have to make. That there 
are to be found outside of the university men of the most 
thorough and elegant culture, who can give the most excel- 
lent instruction in a science or an art, is most certain. But 
it is a characteristic of the university in its teaching to do 
away with contingency which is unavoidable in case of pri- 
vate voluntary efforts. The university presents an organic, 
self-conscious, encyclopaedic representation of all the sciences, 
and thus is created to a greater or less degree an intellectual 
atmosphere which no other place can give. Through this, all 
sciences and their aims are seen as of equal authority — a per- 
sonal stress is laid upon the connection of the sciences. The 
imperfections of a university, which arise through the rivalry 
of external ambition, through the necessity of financial suc- 
cess, through the jealousy of different parties, through schol- 
arships, &c., are finitudes which it has in common with all 
human institutions, and on whose account they are not all to 
be thrown away. — Art-academies are for Art what universi- 
ties are for Science. They are inferior to them in so far as 
they appear more under the form of special schools, as schools 
of architecture, of painting, and conservatories of music ; 
while really it may well be supposed that Architecture, 



70 Tlie Modality of the Process of Teacliing. 

Sculpture, Painting, Music, the Orchestra, and the Drama, 
are, like the Sciences, bound together in a Unixersitas arti- 
um, and that by means of their internal reciprocal action 
new results would follow. — Academies, as isolated master- 
schools, which follow no particular line of teaching, are 
entirely superfluous, and serve only as a Pri/tanewm for 
meritorious scholars, and to reward industry through the 
prizes which they offer. In their idea they belong with the 
university, this appearing externally in the fact that most of 
their members are university professors. But as institutions 
for ostentation by which the ambition of the learned was 
flattered, and to surround princes with scientific glory as 
scientific societies attached to a court, they have lost all sig- 
nificance. They ceased to flourish with the Ptolemies and 
the Egyptian caliphs, and with absolute monarchical govern- 
ments. — In modern times we have passed beyond the abstract 
Jealousy of the so-called Humanities and the Natural Scien- 
ces, because we comprehend that each part of the totality can 
be realized in a proper sense only by its development as rela- 
tively independent. Thus the gynmasmm has its place as that 
elementary school which through a general culture, by means 
of the knowledge of the language and history of the Greeks 
and Romans, prepares for the university ; while, on the other 
hand, the Realscliule, by special attention to Natural Science 
and the living languages, constitutes the transition to the 
technological schools. Nevertheless, because the university 
embraces the Science of Nature, of Technology, of Trade, of 
Finance, and of Statistics, the pupils who have graduated 
from the so-called high schools {Jwhem Bilrgerschvlen) and 
from the Realschulen will be brought together at the uni- 
versity. — 

§ 132. The technique of the school will be determined in 
its details by the peculiarity of its aim. But in general every 
school, no matter what it teaches, ought to have some system 
of rules and regulations by which the relation of the pupil to 
the institution, of the pupils to each other, their relation to 
the teacher, and that of the teachers to each other as well as 
to the supervisory authority, the programme of lessons, the 
apparatus, of the changes of work and recreation, shall be 
clearly set forth. The course of study must be arranged so 



The Modality of the Process of Teaching. 71 

as to avoid two extremes : on the one hand, it has to keep in 
view the special aim of the school, and according to this it 
tends to contract itself. But, on the other hand, it must con- 
sider the relative dependence of one specialty to other spe- 
cialties and to general culture. It must leave the transition 
free, and in this it tends to expand itself. The difficulty is 
here so to assign the limits that the special task of the school 
shall not be sacrificed and deprived of the means of perform- 
ance which it (since it is also always only a part of the whole 
culture) receives by means of its reciprocal action with other 
departments. The programme must assign the exact amount 
of time which can be appropriated to every study. It must 
prescribe the order in which they shall follow each other; 
it must, as far as possible, nnite kindred subjects, so as to 
avoid the useless repetition which dulls the charm of study ; 
it must, in determining the order, bear in mind at the same 
time the necessity imposed by the subject itself and the psy- 
chological progression of intelligence from perception, through 
conception, to the thinking activity which grasps all. It must 
periodically be submitted to revision, so that all matter which 
has, through the changed state of general culture, become out 
of date, may be rejected, and that that which has proved itself 
inimitable may be appropriated; in general, so that it may 
be kept up to the requirements of the times. And, finally, the 
school must, by examinations and reports, aid the pupil in 
the acquirement of a knowledge of his real standing. The 
examination lets him know what he has really learned, and 
what he is able to do : the report gives him an account of his 
culture, exhibits to him in what he has made improvement 
and in what he has fallen behind, what defects he has shown, 
what talents he has displayed, what errors committed, and 
in what relation stands his theoretical development to his 
ethical status. 

— The opposition of the Gymnasia to the demands of the 
agricultural communities is a very interesting phase of edu- 
cational history. They were asked to widen their course so 
as to embrace Mathematics, Physics, Natural History, Geog- 
raphy, and the modern languages. At first they stoutly re- 
sisted ; then they made some concessions; finally, the more 
they made the more they found themselves in contradiction 



73 Tlie Modality of the Process of Teacliing. 

with their true work, and so they produced as an independ- 
ent correlate the Realschiile. After this was founded, the 
gymnasium returned to its old plan, and is now again able 
to place in the foreground the pursuit of classical literature 
and history. It was thus set free from demands made upon 
it which were entirely foreign to its nature. — The examina- 
tion is, on one side, so adapted to the pupil as to make him 
conscious of his own condition. As to its external side, it 
determines whether the pupil shall pass from one class to 
another or from one school to another, or it decides whether 
the school as a whole shall give a public exhibition — an ex- 
hibition which ought to have no trace of ostentation, but 
which in fact is often tinctured with pedagogical char- 
latanism. 

§ 133. The Direction of the school on the side of science must 
be held by the school itself, for the process of the intellect in 
acquiring science, the progress of the method, the determina- 
tions of the subject-matter and the order of its development, 
have their own laws, to which Instruction must submit itself 
if it would attain its end. The school is only one part of the 
whole of culture. In itself it divides into manifold depart- 
ments, together constituting a great organism which in mani- 
fold ways comes into contact with the organism of the state. 
So long as teaching is of a private character, so long as it is 
the reciprocal relation of one individual to another, or so long 
as it is shut up within the circle of the family and belongs 
to it alone, so long it has no objective character. It receives 
this first when it grows to a school. As in history, its first 
form must have a religious character; but this first form, in 
time, disappears. Religion is the absolute relation of man 
to God which subsumes all other relations. In so far as Reli- 
gion exists in the form of a church, those who are members 
of the same church may have instruction given on the na- 
ture of religion among themselves. Instruction on the subject 
is proper, and it is even enjoined upon them as a law — as a 
duty. But further than their own society they may not ex- 
tend their rule. The church may exert itself to make a reli- 
gious spirit felt in the school and to make it penetrate all 
the teaching; but it may not presume, because it has for its 
subject the absolute interest of men, the interest which is 



TTie Modality of the Process ojf Teacliing. 73 

superior to all others, to determine also the other objects of 
Education or the method of treating them. The technical ac- 
quisitions of Reading, "Writing and Arithmetic, Drawing and 
Music, the Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Logic, Anthro- 
pology and Psychology, the practical sciences of finance and 
the municipal regulations, have no direct relation to religion. 
If we attempt to establish one, there inevitably appears in 
them a morbid state which destroys them ; not only so, but 
piety itself disappears, for these accomplishments and this 
knowledge are not included in its idea. 

— Such treatment of Art and Science may be well-meant, 
but it is always an error. It may even make a ludicrous im- 
pression, which is a very dangerous thing for the authority 
of religion. If a church has established schools, it must see 
to it that all which is there taught outside of the religious 
instruction, i.e. all of science and art, shall have no direct 
connection with it as a religious institution. — 

§ 134. The Church, as the external manifestation of reli- 
gion, is concerned with the absolute relation of man, the rela- 
tion to God, special in itself as opposed to his other relations ; 
the State, on the contrary, seizes the life of a nation accord- 
ing to its explicit totality. The State should conduct the edu- 
cation of all its citizens. To it, then, the church can appear 
only as a school, for the church instructs its own people con- 
cerning the nature of religion, partly by teaching proper, that 
of the catechism, partly in quite as edifying a way, by preach- 
ing. From this point of view, the State can look upon the 
church only as one of those schools which prepare for a 
special avocation. The church appears to the State as that 
school which assumes the task of educating the religious ele- 
ment. Just as little as the church should the state attempt 
to exercise any inliuence over Science and Art. In this they 
are exactly alike, and must acknowledge the necessity which 
both Science and Art contain within themselves and by which 
they determine themselves. The laws of Logic, Mathematics, 
Astronomy, Morals, Esthetics, Physiology, &c., are entirely 
independent of the state. It can decree neither discoveries 
nor inventions. The state in its relations to science occupies 
the same ground as it should do with relation to the freedom 
of self-consciousness. It is true that the church teaches man. 



74 The Modality of the Process of Teaching. 

but it demands from him at the same time belief in the truth 
of its dogmas. It rests, as the real church, on presupposed 
authority, and sinks finally all contradictions which may be 
found in the absolute mystery of the existence of God. The 
state, on the contrary, elaborates its idea into the form of 
laws, i.e. into general determinations, of whose necessity it 
convinces itself. It seeks to give to these laws the clearest pos- 
sible form, so that every one may understand them. It con- 
cedes validity only to that which can be proved, and sentences 
the individual according to the external side of the deed (overt 
act) not, as the church does, on its internal side — that of in- 
tention. Finall}^ it demands in him consciousness of his 
deed, because it makes each one responsible for his own deed. 
It has, therefore, the same principle with science, for the proof 
of necessity and the unity of consciousness with its object 
constitute the essence of science. Since the state embraces 
the school as one of its educational organisms, it is from its 
very nature especially called upon to guide its regulation in 
accordance with the manifestation of consciousness. 

— The church calls this "profanation." One might say 
that the church, with its mystery of Faith, always represents 
the absolute problem of science, wliile the state, as to its form, 
coincides with science. Whenever the state abandons the 
strictness of proof — when it begins to measure the individual 
citizen by his intention and not by his deed, and, in place of 
the clear insight of the comprehending consciousness, sets up 
the psychological compulsion of a hollow mechanical autho- 
rity, it destroys itself. — 

§ 135. Neither the church nor the state should attempt to 
control the school in its internal management. Still less can 
the school constitute itself into a state within the state ; for, 
while it is only one of the means which are necessary for de- 
veloping citizens, the state and the church lay claim to the 
whole man his whole life long. The independence of the 
school can then onl}^ consist in this, that it raises with\n the 
state an organ which works under its control, and which as 
school authorit}^ endeavors within itself to befriend the needs 
of the school, while externally it acts on the church and state 
indirectly by means of ethical powers. The emancipation of 
the school can never reasonably mean its abstract isolation, 



Tlie Modality of the Process of Teaching. 75 

or the absorption of the ecclesiastical and political life into 
the school ; it can signify only the free reciprocal action of 
the school with state and church. It must never be forgotten 
that what makes the school a school is not the total process 
of education, for this falls also within the family, the state, 
and the church ; but that the proper work of the school is 
the process of instruction, knowledge, and the acquirement, 
by practice, of skill. 

— The confusion of the idea of Instruction with that of 
Education in general is a common defect in superficial trea- 
tises on these themes. The Radicals among those who are in 
favor of so-called "Emancipation," often erroneously aj)peal 
to "• free Greece " which generally for this fond ignorance is 
made to stand as authority for a thousand things of which it 
never dreamed. In this fictitious Hellas of " free, beautiful 
humanity," they say the limits against which we strive to-day 
did not exist. The histories of Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Di- 
agoras, Socrates, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and of others, who 
were all condemned on account of their "impiety," tell quite 
another story. — 

§ 136. The inspection of the school may be carried out in 
different ways, but it must be required that its special insti- 
tutions sliall be embraced and cared for as organized and 
related wholes, framed in accordance with the idea of the 
state, and that one division of the ministry shall occupy itself 
exclusively with it. The division of labor will specially affect 
the schools for teaching particular avocations. The prescrip- 
tion of the subjects to be studied in each school as appropri- 
ate to it, of the course of study, and of the object thereof, 
properly falls to this department of government, is its imme- 
diate work, and its theory must be changed according to the 
progress and needs of the time. Niemeyer, Schwarz, and 
others, have made out such plans for schools. Scheinert 
has fully painted the Vollischule, Mager the Burgirschule, 
Deinhard and Kapp the Gymnasium. But such delineations, 
however correct the}^ may be, depend upon the actual sum of 
culture of a people and a time, and must therefore continually 
modify their fundamental Ideal. The same is true of the meth- 
ods of instruction in tlie special arts and sciences. iN'iemeyer, 
Schwarz, Herbart, in their sketches of Pedagogics, Beueke in 



76 Education of the Will. 

his Doctrine of Education, and others, have set forth in de- 
tail the method of teaching Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, 
Languages, Natural Science, Geography, History, &c. Such 
directions are, however, ephemeral in value, and only rela- 
tively useful, and must, in order to be truly practical, be al- 
vi^ays newlj^ laid out in accordance with universal educational 
principles, and with the progress of science and art. 

— The idea that the State has the right to oversee the school 
lies in the very idea of the State, which is authorized, and 
under obligation, to secure the education of its citizens, and 
cannot leave their fashioning to chance. The emancipation 
of the school from the State, the abstracting of it, would lead 
to the destruction of the school. There is no dithculty in Pro- 
testant States in the free inter-action of school and church, 
for Protestantism has consciously accepted as its peculiar 
principle individual freedom as Christianity has presented it. 
For Catholic States, however, a difficulty exists. The Pro- 
testant clergyman can with propriety oversee the VollcscJiule, 
for here he works as teacher, not as priest. In the Protestant 
church there are really no Laity according to the original 
meaning of the term. On .the contrary, Catholic clergymen 
are essentially priests, and as such, on account of the uncon- 
ditional obedience which, according to their church, they have 
to demand, they usurp the authority of the State. Prom this 
circumstance arise, at present, numberless collisions in the 
department of school supervision. — 

Third Division. 
pkagmatics (education of the will). 

§ 137. Both Physical and Intellectual Education are in the 
highest degree practical. The first reduces the merely natural 
to a tool which mind shall use for its own ends ; the second 
guides the intelligence, by ways conformable to its nature, 
to the necessary method of the act of teaching and learning, 
which finally branches out into an objective national life, 
into a system of mutually dependent school organizations. 
But in a narrower sense Ve mean by practical education the 
methodical development of the Will. This phrase more clear- 
ly expresses the topic to be considered in this division than 
others sometimes used in Pedagogics [^Bestrehungs termbgen. 



Social Culture. 77 

conative power]. The will is already the gubject of a science 
of its own, i.e. of Ethics ; and if Pedagogics would proceed in 
anywise scientifically, it must recognize and presuppose the 
idea and the existence of this science. It should not restate in 
full the doctrines of freedom of duty, of virtue, and of con- 
science, although we have often seen this done in empirical 
works on Pedagogics. Pedagogics has to deal with the idea 
of freedom and morality only so far as it fixes the technique 
of their process, and at the same time it confesses itself to 
be weakest just here, where nothing is of any worth without 
a pure self-determination. 

§ 138. The pupil must (1) become civilized ; i.e. he must 
learn to govern, as a thing external to him, his natural 
egotism, and to make the forms which civilized society has 
adopted his own. (2) He must become imbued with morali- 
ty ; i.e. he must learn to determine his actions, not only with 
reference to what is agreeable and useful, but according to 
the principle of the Good ; he must become virtually free, 
form a character, and must habitually look upon the ne- 
cessity of freedom as the absolute measure of his actions. 
(3) He must become religious ; i.e. he must discern that the 
world, with all its changes, himself included, is only pheno- 
menal ; the afiiimative side of this insight into the emptiness 
of the finite and transitory, which man would so willingly 
make everlasting, is the consciousness of the absolute exist- 
ing in and for itself, which, in its certainty of its truth, not 
torn asunder through tlie process of manifestation, constitutes 
no part of its changes, but, while it actually presents them, 
permeates them all, and freely distinguishes itself from them. 
In so far as man relates himself to God, he cancels all finitude 
and transitoriness, and by this feeling frees himself from the 
externality of phenomena. Virtue on the side of civilization 
is Politeness ; on that of morality, Conscientiousness; and 
on that of religion. Humility. 

FIRST CHAPTER. 

Social Culture. 

§ 139. The social development of man makes the beginning 
of practical education. It is not necessary to suppose a spe- 
cial social instinct. The inclination of man to the society of 



78 Social Culture. 

men does not arise only from the identity of their nature, but 
is also in certain cases affected by particular relations. The 
natural starting-point of social culture is the Family. But 
this educates the child for Society, and by means of Society 
the individual passes over into relations with the world at 
large. Natural sympathy changes to polite behavior, and 
this to the dexterous and circumspect deportment, whose 
truth nevertheless is first the ethical purity which combines 
with the wisdom of the serpent the harmlessness of the dove. 

§ 140. (1) The Family is the natural social circle to which 
man primarily belongs. In it all the immediate difft^rences 
which exist are compensated by the equally immediate unity 
of the relationship. The subordination of the wife to the 
husband, of the children to their parents, of the younger chil- 
dren to their elder brothers and sisters, ceases to be subor- 
dination, through the intimacy of love. The child learns 
obedience to authority, and in this it gives free personal 
satisfaction to its parents and enjoys the same. All the rela- 
tions in which he finds himself there are penetrated by the 
warmth of implicit confidence, which can be replaced for the 
child by nothing else. In this sacred circle the tenderest 
emotions of the heart are developed by the personal interest 
of all its members in what happens to any one, and thus the 
foundation is laid of a susceptibility to all genuine or real 
friendship. 

— Nothing more unreasonable or inhuman could exist than 
those modern theories which would destroy the family and 
would leave the children, the offspring of the anarchy of free- 
love, to grow up in public nurseries. This would appear to 
be very humanitarian; indeed these socialists talk of noth- 
ing but the interests of humanity — they are never weary of 
uttering their insipid jests on the institution of the family, 
as if it were the principle of all narrow-mindedness. Have 
these fanatics, who are seeking after an abstraction of hu- 
manity, ever examined our foundling-hospitals, orphan asy- 
lums, barracks, and prisons, to discover in some degree to 
what an atomic state of barren cleverness a human being- 
grows who has never formed a part of a family ? The Family 
is only one pliase in the grand order of the ethical organiza- 
tion ; but it is the substantial phase from which man passively 



Social Culture. 79 

proceeds, but into which, as he founds a family of his own, 
he actively returns. The child lives in the Family in the 
common joy and grief of sympathy for all, and, in the emo- 
tion with which he sees his parents approach death while he 
is hastening towards the full enjoyment of existence, expe- 
riences the finer feelings which are so powerful in creating in 
him a deeper and more tender understanding of everything 
human. — 

§ 141. (2) The Family rears the children not for itself but 
for the civil society. In this we have a system of morals pro- 
ducing externally a social technique, a circle of lixed forms 
of society. This technique endeavors to subdue the natural 
roughness of man, at least as far as it manifests itself exter- 
nall}^ Because he is spirit, man is not to yield himself to 
his immediateness ; he is to exhibit to man his naturalness 
as under the control of spirit. The etiquette of propriety on 
the one hand facilitates the manifestation of individuality 
by means of which the individual becomes interesting to oth- 
ers, and on the other hand, since its forms are alike for all, it 
makes us recognize the likeness of the individual to all oth- 
ers and so makes their intercourse easier. 

— The conventional form is no mere constraint ; but essen- 
tially a protection not only for the freedom of the individual, 
but much more the protection of the individual against the 
rude impetuosity of his own naturalness. Savages and peas- 
ants for this reason are, in their relations to each other, by 
no means as unconstrained as one often represents them, but 
hold closely to a ceremonious behavior. There is in one of 
Immerman's stories, "The Village Justice," a very excellent 
picture of the conventional forms with which the peasant 
loves to surround himself. The scene in which the towns- 
man who thinks that he can dispense with forms among the 
peasants is very entertainingly taught better, is exceedingly 
valuable in an educational point of view. The feeling of 
shame which man has in regard to his mere naturalness is 
often extended to relations where it has no direct signilicance, 
since this sense of shame is appealed to in children in refer- 
ence to things which are really perfectly indifferent exter- 
nalities. — 

§ 142. Education with regard to social culture has two 



80 Social Culture. * 

extremes to avoid: the youth may, in his effort to prove his 
individuality, become vain and conceited, and fall into an 
attempt to appear interesting ; or he may become slavishly 
dependent on conventional forms, a kind of social pedant. 
This state of nullity which contents itself with the mechani- 
cal polish of social formalism is ethically more dangerous 
than the tendency to a marked individuality, for it betrays 
emptiness ; while the effort towards a peculiar differentiation 
from others, to become interesting to others, indicates power. 

§ 143. When we have a harmony of the manifestation of 
the individual with the expression of the recognition of the 
equality of others we have what is called deportment or po- 
liteness, which combines dignity and grace, self-respect and 
modesty. We call it when fully complete, Urbanity. It treats 
the conventional forms with irony, since, at the same time 
that it yields to them, it allows the productivity of spirit to 
shine through them in little deviation from them, as if it were 
fully able to make others in their place. 

— True politeness shows that it remains master of forms. 
It is very necessary to accustom children to courtesy and to 
bring them up in the etiquette of the prevailing social cus- 
tom ; but they must be prevented from falling into an absurd 
formality which makes the triumph of a polite behavior to 
consist in a blind following of the dictates of the last fashion- 
journal, and in the exact copying of the phraseology and 
directions of some book on manners. One can best teach and 
practise politeness when he does not merely copy the social 
technique, but comprehends its original idea. 

§ 144. (3) But to fully initiate the youth into the institu- 
tions of civilization one must not only call out the feelings of 
his heart in the bosom of the family, not only give to him the 
formal refinement necessary to his intercourse with society; 
it must also perform to him the painful duty of making him 
acquainted with the mysteries of the ways of the world. This 
is a painful duty, for the child naturally feels an unlimited 
confidence in all men. This confidence must not be destroy- 
ed, but it must be tempered. The mystery of the way of the 
world is the deceit which springs from selfishness. We must 
provide against it by a proper degree of distrust. We must 
teach the youth that he may be imposed upon by deceit, dis- 



Moral Culture. 81 

simulation, and hypocrisy, and that therefore he must not 
give his confidence lightly and credulously. He himself must 
learn how he can, without deceit, gain his own ends in the 
midst of the throng of opposing interests. 

— Kant in his Pedagogics calls that worldly-wise behavior 
by which the individual is to demean himself in opposition 
to others, Impenetrability. By its means man learns how to 
"manage men." In Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, we 
have pointed out the true value of egotism in its relation to 
morals. All his words amount to this, that we are to con- 
sider every man to be an egotist, and to convert his very 
egotism into a means of finding out his weak side; i.e. to 
flatter him by exciting his vanity, and by means of such flat- 
tery to ascertain his limits. In common life, the expression 
"having had experiences" means about the same thing as, 
having been deceived and betrayed. — 

SECOND CHAPTKK. 

Moral Culture. 

§ 145. The truth of social culture lies in moral culture. 
Without this latter, every art of behavior remains worthless, 
and can never attain the clearness of Iliimility and Dignity 
which are possible to it in its unity with morality. For the 
better determination of this idea Pedagogics must refer to 
Ethics itself, and can here give the part of its content which 
relates to Education only in the form of educational maxims. 
The principal categories of Ethics in the domain of morality 
are the ideas of Duty, Virtue, and Conscience. Education 
must lay stress on the truth that nothing in the world has 
any absolute value except will guided by the right. 

§ 146. Thence follows (1) the maxim relating to the idea 
of Duty, that we must accustom the pupil to unconditional 
obedience to it, so that he shall perform it for no other rea- 
son than that it is duty. It is true that the performance of a 
duty may bring with it externally a result agreeable or dis- 
agreeable, useful or harmful; but the consideration of such 
connection ought never to determine us. This moral demand, 
though it may appear to be excessive severity, is the abso- 
lute foundation of all genuine ethical practice. All "highest 

7 



82 Moral Culture. 

happiness theories," however finely spun they may be, when 
taken as a guide for life, lead at last to Sophistry, and this 
to contradictions which ruin the life. 

§ 147. (2) Virtue must make actual what duty commands, 
or. rather, the actualizing of duty is Virtue. And here we 
must say next, then, that the principal things to be consid- 
ered under Virtue are {a) the dialectic of particular virtues, 
{h) renunciation, and (c) character. 

§ 148. {a) From the dialectic of particular virtues there 
follows the educational maxim that we must practise all 
virtues with equal faithfulness, for all together constitute an 
ethical system complete in itself, in which no one is indiffer- 
ent to another. 

— Morality should recognize no distinction of superiority 
among the different virtues. They reciprocally determine 
each other. There is no such thing as one virtue which shines 
out above the others, and still less should we have any spe- 
cial gift for virtue. The pupil must be taught to recognize 
no great and no small in the virtues, for that one which may 
at first sight seem small is inseparably connected with that 
which is seemingly the greatest. Many virtues are attractive 
by reason of their external consequences, as e.g. industry be- 
cause of success in business, worthy conduct because of the 
respect paid to it, charity because of the pleasure attending 
it ; but man should not practise these virtues because he en- 
joys them: he must devote the same amount of self-sacrifice 
and of assiduity to those virtues which (as Christ said) are 
to be performed in secret. 

— It is especially valuable, in an educational respect, to 
gain an insight, into the transition of which each virtue is 
empirically capable, into a negative as well as into a positive 
extreme. The differences between the extremes and the 
golden mean are diflferences in quality, although they ar- 
rive at this difference in quality by means of difference 
in quantity. Kant has, as is well known, attacked the 
Aristotelian doctrine of the ethical luaozec:, since he was con- 
sidering the qualitative difference of the mind as differen- 
tiating principle ; this was correct for the subject with which 
he dealt, but in the objective development we do arrive on 



Moral Culture. 83 

the other hand at the determination of a quantitative limit ; 
e.g. a man, with the most earnest intention of doing right, 
may be in doubt whether he has not, in any task, done more 
or less than was fitting for him. 

— As no virtue can cease its demands for us, no one can 
permit any exceptions or any provisional circumstances to 
€ome in the way of his duties. Our moral culture will always 
certainly manifest itself in very unequal phases if we, out of 
narrowness and weakness, neglect entirely one virtue v^hile 
we diligently cultivate another. If we are forced into such un- 
equal acti(jn, we are not responsible for the result ; but it is 
dangerous and deserves punishment if we voluntarily encour- 
age it. Tlie pupil must be warned against a certain moral 
negligence which consists in yielding to certain* weaknesses, 
faults, or (') imes, a little longer and a little longer, because he 
has fixed a certain time after which he intends to do bettet. 
Up to that time he allows himself to be a loiterer in ethics, 
Perhaps he will assert that his companions, his surroundings, 
his position, &c., must be changed before he can alter his in- 
ternal conduct. Wherever education or temperament favors 
sentimentality, we shall find birth-days, new-year's day, con- 
firmation day, &c., selected as these turning-points. It is not 
to be denied that man proceeds in his internal life from epoch 
to epoch, and renews himself in his most internal nature, nor 
can we deny that moments like those mentioned are espe- 
cially favorable in man to an effort towards self-transforma- 
tion because they invite introspection ; but it is not to be 
endured that the youth, while looking forward to such a mo- 
ment, should consciousl}^ persist in his evil-doing. If he does, 
we shall have as consequences that when the solemn moment 
which he has set at last arrives, at the stirring of the first 
emotion he perceives with terror that he has changed nothing 
in himself, that the same temptations are present to him, the 
same weakness takes possession of him, «&c. In our business, 
in our theoretical endeavors, &c., it may certainly happen 
that, on account of want of time, or means, or humor, we may 
put off some work to another time ; but moralit}'^ stands on 
a higher plane than these, because it, as the concrete abso- 
luteness of the will, makes unceasing demand on the whole 
and undivided man. In morality there are no vacations, no 



84 Moral Culture. 

interims. As we in ascending a flight of stairs take good care 
not to make a single mis-step, and give our conscious atten- 
tion to every step, so we must not allow any exceptions in 
moral affairs, must not appoint given times for better con- 
duct, but must await these last as natural crises, and must 
seek to live in time as in Eternity. — 

§ 149. (&) From Renunciation springs the injunction of 
self-government. The action of education on the will to form 
habits in it, is discipline or training in a narrower sense. 
Renunciation teaches us to know the relation in which we 
in fact, as historical persons, stand to the idea of the Good. 
From our empirical knowledge of ourselves we derive the 
idea of our limits ; from the absolute knowledge of ourselves 
on the other hand, which presents to us the nature of Freedom 
as our own actuality, we derive the conception of the resistless 
might of the genuine will for the good. But to actualize this 
conception we must have practice. This practice is the proper 
renunciation. Every man must devise for himself some spe- 
cial set of rules, which shall be determined by his peculiari- 
ties and his resulting temptations. These rules must have 
as their innermost essence the subduing of self, the vanquish- 
ing of his negative arbitrariness by means of the universality 
and necessity of the will. 

— In order to make this easy, the youth may be practised 
in renouncing for himself even the arbitrariness which is 
permitted to him. One often speaks of renunciation as if it 
belonged especially to the middle ages and to Catholicism ; 
but this is an error. Renunciation in its one-sided form as 
relying on works, and for the purpose of mortification, is 
asceticism, and belongs to them ; but Renunciation in gen- 
eral is a necessary determination of morals. The keeping 
of a journal is said to assist in the practice of virtue, but its 
value depends on how it is kept. To one it may be a curse^ 
to another a blessing. Fichte, Gothe, Byron, and others, have 
kept journals and have been assisted thereby; while others^ 
as Lavater, have been thwarted by them. Vain people will 
every evening record with pen and ink their admiration of 
the correct course of life which they have led in the day de- 
voted to their pleasure. — 

§ 150. (c) The result of the practice in virtue, or, as it is 



Moral Culture. 85 

commonly expressed, of the individual actualization of free- 
dom, is the methodical determinateness of the individual will 
as Character. This conception of character is formal, for it 
contains only the identity which is implied in the ruling of a 
will on its external side as constant. As there are good, strong 
and beautiful characters, so there are also bad, weak, and 
•detestable ones. When in Pedagogics, therefore, we speak 
so much of the *building up of a character, we mean the mak- 
ing permanent of a direction of the individual will towards 
the actualization of the Good. Freedom ought to be the cha- 
racter of character. Education must therefore observe closely 
the inter-action of the factors which go to form character, viz.,- 
(a) the temperament, as the natural character of the man ; 
{^) external events, the historical element; (j-) the energy 
of the Will, by which, in its limits of nature and history, it 
realizes the idea of the Good in and for itself as the proper 
ethical character. Temperament determines the Rhythm of 
our external manifestation of ourselves; the events in which 
we live assign to us the ethical problem, but the Will in its 
sovereignty stamps its seal on the form given by these po- 
tentialities. Pedagogics aims at accustoming the youth to 
freedom, so that he shall always measure his deed by the 
idea of the Good. It does not desire a formal independence, 
which may also be called character, but a real independence 
resting upon the conception of freedom as that which is ab- 
solutely necessary. The pedagogical maxim is then : Be 
independent, but be so through doing Good. 

— According to preconceived opinion, stubbornness and 
obstinacy claim that they are the foundation of character. 
But they may spring from weakness and indeterminate- 
ness, on which account one needs to be well on his gaard. 
A gentle disposition, through enthusiasm for the Good, may 
attain to quite as great a firmness of will. Coarseness and 
meanness are on no account to be tolerated. — 

§ 151. (3) We pass from the consideration of the culture of 
character to that of conscience. This is the relation which 
the moral agent makes between himself as manifestation and 
himself as idea. It compares itself, in its past or future, with 
its nature, and j udges itself accordingly as good or bad. This 
independence of the ethical judgment is the- soul proper of 



86 Religious Culture. 

all morality, the negation of all self-deception and of all 
deception through another. The pedagogical maxim is : Be 
conscientious. Be in the last instance dependent only 
upon the conception which thou thyself hast of the idea of 
the Good ! 

— The self-criticism prompted by conscience hovers over 
all our historical actuality, and is the ground of all our ra- 
tional progress. Fichte's stern words remain, therefore, eter- 
nally true: "He who has a bad character, must absolutely 
create for himself a better one." — 

THIRD CHAPTER. 

Religious Culture. 

§ 152. Social culture contains the formal phase, moral cul- 
ture the real phase, of the practical mind. Conscience forms 
the transition to religious culture. In its apodeictic nature^ 
it is the absoluteness of spirit. The individual discerns in 
the depths of its own consciousness the determinations of 
universality and of necessity to which it has to subject itself. 
They appear to it as the voice of God. Religion makes its 
appearance as soon as the individual distinguishes the Abso- 
lute from himself as personal, as a subject existing for itself 
and therefore for him. The atheist remains at the stage of 
insight into the absoluteness of the logical and physical^ 
{esthetic and practical categories. He may, therefore, be 
perfectly moral. He lacks religion, though he loves to cha- 
racterize his uprightness by this name, and to transfer the 
dogmatic determinations of positive religion into the ethical 
sphere. It belongs to the province of religion that I demean 
myself towards the Absolute not only as toward that which 
is my own substance, and that in relation to it not I alone 
am the subject, but that to me also the substance in itself is 
a personal subject for itself. If I look upon myself as the 
only absolute, I make myself devoid of spiritual essence. I 
am only absolute self-consciousness, for which, because it as 
idea relates only to itself, there remains only the impulse to 
a persistent conflict with every self-consciousness not identi- 
cal with it. Were this the case, such a self-consciousness 
would be only theoretical irony. In religion I know the Abso- 
lute as essence, when I am known by him. Everything else,. 



Religious Culture. 87 

myself included, is finite and transitory, however significant 
it may be, however relatively and momentarily the Infinite 
may exist in it. As existence even, it is transitory. The 
Absolute, positing itself, distinguishing itself from itself in 
unity with itself, is always like to itself, and takes up all the 
unrest of the phenomenal world back again into its simple 
essence. 

§ 153. This process of the individual spirit, in which it rises 
out of the multiplicity of all relations into union with the 
Absolute as the substantial subject, and in which nature and 
history are united, we may call, in a restricted sense, a 
change of heart [Gemuth]. In a wider sense of the word we 
give this name to a certain sentimental cheerfulness (light- 
heartedness), a sense of comfort — of little significance. The 
highest emotions of the heart culminate in religion, whose 
warmth is inspired by practical activity and conscien- 
tiousness. 

§ 154. Education has to fit man for religion. (1) It gives 
him the conception of it ; (2) it endeavors to have this con- 
ception actualized in him ; (8) it subordinates the theoretical 
and practical process in fashioning him to a determinate 
stand-point of religious culture. 

— In the working out or detailed treatment of Pedagogics, 
the position which the conception of religion occupies is very 
uncertain. Many writers on Education place it at the begin- 
ning, while others reserve it for the end. Others naively 
bring it forward in the midst of heterogeneous surroundings, 
but know how to say very little concerning it, and urge teach- 
ers to kindle the fire of religious feeling in their pupils by 
teaching them to fear God. Through all their writing, we 
hear the cry that in Education nothing is so important as 
Religion. Rightly understood, this saying is quite true. The 
religious spirit, the consciousness of tlie Absolute, and the 
reverence for it, should permeate all. Not unfrequently, how- 
ever, we find that what is meant by religion is theology, or 
the church ceremonial, and these are only one-sided phases 
of the total religious process. The Anglican High Gliurch 
presents in the colleges and universities of England a sad 
example of this error. What can be more deadening to the 
spirit, more foreign to religion, than the morning and evening 



88 Theoretical Process of Religious Culture. 

prayers as they are carried on at Oxford and Cambridge with 
machine-like regnlarity ! But also to England belongs the 
credit of the sad fact, that, according to Kohl's report, there 
live in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and London, 
thousands of men who have never enjoyed any teaching in 
religion, have never been baptized, who live absolutely with- 
out religion in brutal stupidity. Religion must form the cul- 
minating point of Education. It takes up into itself the didac- 
tical and practical elements, and rises through the force of 
its content to universality. 

I. The Theoretical Process of Jleligious Culture. 

§ 155. Religion, in common with every content of the spirit, 
must pass through three stages of feeling, conception, and 
comprehension. Whatever may be the special character of 
any religion it cannot avoid this psychological necessity, 
either in its general history or in the history of the individual 
consciousness. The teacher must understand this process, 
partly in order that he may make it easier to the youth, 
partly that he may guard against the malformation of the 
religious feeling which may arise through the fact of the 
youth's remaining in one stage after he is ready for another 
and needs it. Pedagogics must therefore lay out beforehand 
the philosophy of religion, on which alone can we found the 
complete discussion of this idea. 

§ 156. (1) Religion exists first as religious feeling. The 
person is still immediately identical with the Divine, does 
not yet distinguish himself from the absoluteness of his be- 
ing, and is in so far determined by it. In so far as he feels 
the divine, he is a mystery to himself. This beginning is 
necessary. Religion cannot be produced in men from the 
external side; its genesis belongs rather to the jjrimitive 
depths in which God himself and the individual soul are es- 
sentially one. 

— The educator must not allow himself to suppose that he 
is able to make a religion. Religion dwells originally in ev- 
ery individual soul, for every one is born of God. Education 
can only aid the religious feeling in its development. As far 
as regards the psychological form, it was quite correct for 
Schleiermacher and his followers to characterize the absolute- 



Theoretical Process of Religious Culture. 89 

ness of the religious feeling as the feeling of dependence, fox' 
feeling is determined by that which it feels ; it depends upon 
its content. But in so far as God constitutes the content of 
the feeling, there appears the opposite of all dependence or ab- 
solute emancipation. I maintain this in opj)osition to Schlei- 
€rmaclier. Religion lifts man above the finite, temporal and 
transitory, and frees him from the control of the phenomenal 
world. Even the lowest form of religion does this ; and when 
it is said that Schleiermacher has been unjustly criticized 
for this expression of dependence, this distinction is over- 
looked. — 

§ 157. But religious feeling as such rises into something 
higher when the spirit distinguishes the content of this reli- 
gious feeling from any other content which it also feels, rep- 
resents it clearly to itself, and places itself over against it 
formally as a free individual. 

— But we must not understand that the religious feeling is 
destroyed in this process ; in rising to the form of distinct 
representation, it remains at the same time as a necessary 
form of the Intelligence. — 

§ 158. If the spirit is held back and prevented from passing 
out of the simplicity of feeling into the act of distinguishing 
the perception from what it becomes, the conception — if its 
efforts towards the forming of this conception are continually 
re-dissolved into feeling, then feeling, which was as the first 
step perfectly healthy and correct, will become morbid and 
degenerate into a wretched mysticism. Education must, 
therefore, make sure that this feeling is not destroyed by the 
progress of its content into perception and conception on the 
side of psychological form, but rather that it attains truth 
thereby. 

§ 159. (2) Conception as the ideally transformed percep- 
tion dissects the religious content on its different sides, and 
follows each of these to its consequence. Imagination con- 
trols the individual conceptions, but by no means with that 
absoluteness which is often supposed ; for each picture has 
in itself its logical consequence to which imagination must 
yield ; e.g. if a religion represents God as an animal, or as 
half animal and half man, or as man, each of these conceptions 
has in its development its consequences for the imagination. 



90 Theoretical Process of Religious Culture. 

§ 160. We rise out of the stage of Conception when the spi- 
rit tries to determine the universality of its content according 
to its necessity, i.e. when it begins to think. The necessity 
of its pictures is a mere presupposition for the imagination. 
The thinking activity, however, recognizes not only the con- 
tradiction which exists between the sensuous, limited form 
of the individual conception, and the absolute nature of its 
content, but also the contradiction in which the conceptions 
lind themselves with respect to each other. 

§ 161. If the spirit is prevented from passing out of the 
varied pictures of conception to the supersensuous clearness 
and simplicity of the thinking activity — if the content which 
it already begins to seize as idea is again dissolved into the 
confusion of the picture-world, then the religion of imagina- 
tion, which was a perfectly proper form as the second step, 
becomes perverted into some form of idolatry, either coarse 
or refined. Education must therefore not oppose the thinking 
activity if the latter undertakes to criticize religious concep- 
tions ; on the contrary, it must guide this so that the dis- 
covery of the contradictions which unavoidably adhere to 
sensuous form shall not mislead the youth into the folly of 
throwing away, with the relative untruth of the form, also 
the religious content in general. 

— It is an error for educators to desire to keep the imagina- 
tion apart from religious feeling, but it is also an error to 
detain the mind, which is on its formal side the activity of 
knowing, in the stage of imagination, and to desire to con- 
demn it thence into the service of canonical allegories. The 
more, in opposition to this, it is possessed with the charm of 
thinking, the more is it in danger of condemning the content 
of religion itself as a mere fictitious conception. As a transi- 
tion-stage the religion of imagination is perfect!}" normal, 
and it does not in the least impair freedom if, for example, 
one has personified evil as a living Devil. The error does 
not lie in this, but in the making absolute these determinate, 
aesthetic forms of religion. The reaction of the thinking 
activity against such assthectic absolutism then undertakes 
in its negative absolutism to despise the content also, as if 
it were a mere conception. — 

§ 162. (3) In the thinking activity the spirit attains that 



^lesi 



Theoretical Process of Religious Culture. 91 

form of the religious content which is identical with that of its 
simple consciousness, and above which there is no other for the 
intelligence as theoretical. But we distinguish three varie- 
ties in this thinking activit}^ : the abstract, the reflective, and 
the speculative. The Abstract gives us the religious content 
of consciousness in the form of abstractions or dogmas, i.e. 
propositions which set up a definition as a universal, and 
add to it another as the reason for its necessity. The Re- 
flective stage busies itself with the relation of dogmas to each 
other, and with the search for the grounds on which their ne- 
cessity must rest. It is essentially critical, and hence skep- 
tical. The explanation of the dogmas, which is carried on in 
this process of reasoning and skeptical investigation, is com- 
pleted alone in speculative thinking, which recognizes the 
free unity of the content and its form as its own proper self- 
determination of the content, creating its own difi'erences. 
Education must know this stage of the intelligence, partly 
that it may in advance preserve, in the midst of its changes, 
that repose which it brings into the consciousness ; partly 
that it may be able to lead to the process of change itself, in 
accordance with the organic connection of its phases. We 
should prevent the criticism of the abstract understanding 
by the reflective stage as little as we should that of the ima- 
gination by the thinking activity. But the stage of reflection 
is not the last possibility of the thinking activity, although, 
in the variety of its skepticism it often takes itself for such, 
and, with the emptiness of mere negation to which it holds, 
often brings itself forward into undesirable prominence. It 
becomes evident, in this view, how very necessary for man, 
with respect to religion, is a genuine philosophical culture, 
so that he may not lose the certainty of the existence of the 
Absolute in the midst of the obstinacy of dogmas and the 
changes of opinions. 

§ 163. Education must then not fear the descent into dog- 
matic abstraction, since this is an indispensable means for 
theoretical culture in its totality, and the consciousness can- 
not dispense with it in its history. But Education has, in the 
concrete, carefully to discern in which of these stages of 
culture any particular consciousness may be. For if for 
mankind as a race the fostering of philosophy is absolutely 



92 Practical Process of Religious Culture. 

necessary, it by no means follows that this necessity exists 
for each individual. To children, to women, e.g. for all kinds 
of simple and limited lives, the form of the religion of the 
imagination is well suited, and the form o£ comprehension 
can come only relatively to them. Education must not, then, 
desire powerfully and prematurely to develop the thinking 
activity before the intelligence is really fully grown. 

— The superficial thinking wliicli many teachers demand 
in the sphere of religion is no less impractical than the want 
of all guidance into rightl_y ordered meditations on religious 
subjects. It is natural that the lower form of intelligence 
should, in contrast with the higher, appear to be frivolous, 
because it has no need of change of form as the higher has, 
and on this account it looks upon the destruction of the form 
of a picture or a dogma as the destruction of religion itself. 
In our time the idea is very prevalent that the content itself 
must change with the changing of the psychological form, 
and that therefore a religion in the stage of feeling, of con- 
<5eption, and of comprehension, can no longer be the same in 
its essence. These suppositions, which are so popular, and 
are considered to be high philosophy, spring from the super- 
ficiality of psychological inquiry. — 

§ 164. The theoretical culture of tlie religious feeling en- 
deavors therefore with the freedom of philosophical criticism 
to elevate the presupposition of Reason in the religious con- 
tent to self-assured insight by means of the proof of the 
necessity of its determinations. This is the only reasonable 
pedagogical way not only to prevent the degeneration of the 
religious consciousness into a miserable mysticism or into 
frivolity, but also to remove these if they are already ex- 
istent. 

— External seclusion avails nothing. The crises of the 
world-historical changes in the religious consciousness find 
their way through the thickest cloister walls ; tlie philoso- 
pher Reinhold was a pupil of the Jesuits, the philosopher 
Schad of the Benedictines. — 

ir. The Practical Process of Religious Culture. 

§ 165. The theoretical culture is truly practical, for it gives 
man definite conceptions and thoughts of the Divine and his 



Practical Process of Religious Culture. 93 

relation to him. But in a narrower sense that culture is prac- 
tical which relates to the Will as such. Education has in this 
respect to distinguish (1) consecration — religious feeling in 
general, — (2) the induction of the youth into the forms of a 
positive religion, and (8) his reconciliation with his lot. 

§ 1G6. (I) Religious feeling presupposes morality as an in- 
dispensable condition without which it cannot inculcate its 
ideas. But if man from a merely moral stand-point places 
himself in relation to the idea of Duty us such, the ethical 
religious stand-point differs from it in this, that it places the 
necessity of the Good as the self-determination of the divine 
Will and thus makes of practice a personal relation to God, 
changing the Good to the Holy and the Evil to Sin. Educa- 
tion must therefore first accustom the youth to the idea, that 
in doing the Good he unites himself with God as with the 
absolute Person, but that in doing Evil he separates himself 
from him. The feeling that he through his deed comes into 
contact with God himself, positively or negatively, deepens 
the moral conduct to an intense sensibility of the heart. 

§ 167. (2) The religious sense which grows in the child that 
he has an uninterrupted personal relation to the Absolute as 
a person, constitutes the beginning of the practical forming 
of religion. The second step is the induction of the child into 
the objective forms of worship established in some positive 
religion. Through religious training the child learns to re- 
nounce his egotism ; through attendance on religious services 
he learns to give expression to his religious feeling in prayer, 
in the use of symbols, and in church festivals. Education 
must, however, endeavor to retain freedom with regard to 
these forms, so that they shall not be confounded with Reli- 
gion itself. Religion displays itself in these ceremonies, but 
they as mere forms are of value only in so far as they, while 
externalities, are manifestations of the spirit which produ- 
ces them. 

— If the mechanism of ceremonial forms is taken as reli- 
gion itself, the service of God degenerates into the false ser 
vice of religion, as Kant has designated it in Religion loitldn 
the Limits of Pure Reason. Nothing is more destructive to 
the sensibility to all real religious culture than the want of 
earnestness with which prayers, readings from the Bible^ 



■94 Practical Process of Religious Culture. 

attendance on churcli, the communion, &c., are often practised 
by teachers. But one must not conclude from this extreme 
that an ignorance of all sacred forms in general would be 
more desirable for the child. — 

§ 168. (3) It is possible that a man on the stand-point of 
■ecclesiastical religious observances may be fully contented; 
he may be fully occupied in them, and perfect his life there- 
by in perfect content. But by far the greater number of men 
will see themselves forced to experience the truth of religion 
in the hard vicissitudes of their lot, since they carry on some 
business, and with that business create for themselves a 
past whose consequences condition their future. They limit 
themselves through their deeds, whose involuntary-voluntary 
-authors they become ; involuntary in so far as they are chal- 
lenged to the deeds from the totality of events, voluntary in so 
far as they undertake them and bring about an actual change 
in the world. The history of the individual man appears 
therefore on the one hand, if we consider its material, as the 
work of circumstances ; but on the other hand, if we reflect 
on the form, as the act of a self determining actor. Want of 
freedom (the being determined through the given situation) 
and freedom (the determination to the act) are united in 
actual life as something which is exactly so, and cannot 
become anything else as final. The essence of the spiritual 
being stands always over against this unavoidable limitation 
as that which is in itself infinite, which is beyond all history, 
because the absolute spirit, in and for itself, has no history. 
That which one calls his history is only the manifesting of 
himself, and his everlasting return out of this manifestation 
into himself an act which in absolute spirit coincides with 
the transcending of all manifestation. From the nature which 
belongs to him there arises for the individual spirit the im- 
pulse towards a holy life, i.e. the being freed from his history 
even in the midst of its process. He gratifies this impulse 
negatively through the considering of what has happened as 
past and gone, as that which lives now only ideally in the 
recollection ; and positively through the positing of a new 
actual existence in which he strives to realize the idea of free- 
dom which constitutes his necessity, as purer and higher than 
before. This constant new-birth out of the grave of the past 



Practical Process of Religious Culture. 95 

to the life of a more beautiful future is the genuine reconci- 
liation with destiny. The false reconciliation may assume 
different forms. It may abstain from all action because man 
through this limits himself and becomes responsible. This 
is to despair of freedom, which condemns the spirit to the 
loss of itself since its nature demands activity. The abstract 
quietism of the Indian penitents, of the Buddhists, of the fa- 
natical ascetics, of the Protestant recluses, «Src., is an error of 
this kind. The man may become indifferent about the ethi- 
cal determinateness of his deeds. In this case he acts ; but 
because he has no faith in the necessary connection of his 
deeds through the means of freedom, a connection which he 
would willingly ascribe to mere chance, he loses his spiritual 
essence. This is the error of indifference and of its frivolity, 
which denies the open mystery of the ruling of destiny. Edu- 
cation must therefore imbue man with respect for external 
movements of history and with confidence in the inexhausti- 
bleness of the progressive human spirit, since only by produ- 
cing better things can he affirmatively elevate himself above 
his past. This active acknowledgment of the necessity of 
freedom as the determining principle of destiny gives the 
highest satisfaction to which practical religious feeling may 
arrive, for blessedness develops itself in it — that blessedness 
which does not know that it is circumscribed by finitude 
and transitoriness, and which possesses the immortal cour- 
age to strive always anew for perfection with free resigna- 
tion at its non-realization, so that happiness and misery, 
pleasure and pain, are conquered by the power of disinter- 
ested self-sacrifice. 

— The escape from action in an artificial absence of all 
events in life, which often sinks to a veritable brutalizing of 
man. is the distinguishing feature of all monkish pedagogics. 
In our time there is especial need of a reconciliation between 
man and destiny, for all the world is discontented. The worst 
form of discontent is when one is, as the French say, hlase ; 
though the word is not, as many fancy, derived originally 
from the French, but from the Greek [-i'AaZer^, to wither. It is 
true that all culture passes through phases, each of which 
becomes momentarily and relatively wearisome, and that in 
so far one may be hlase in any age. But in modern times 



96 Absolute Process of Religious Culture. 

tliis state of feeling has increased to that of thorough disgust 
— disgust which nevertheless at the same time demands en- 
joyment. The one who is hlase has enjoyed everything, felt 
everything, mocked at everything. He has passed from the 
enjoyment of pleasure to sentimentality, i.e. to rioting in 
feeling; from sentimentality to irony with regard to feeling^ 
and from this to the torment of feeling his entire weakness 
and emptiness as opposed to these. He ridicules this also^ 
as if if it were a consolation to him toiling away the universe 
like a squeezed lemon, and to be able to assert that in pure 
nothingness lies the truth of all things. And yet neverthe- 
less this irony furnishes the point on which Education can 
fasten, in order to kindle anew in him the religious feelings 
and to lead him back to a loving recognition of actuality, ta 
a respect for his own history. The greatest difficulty which 
Education has to encounter here is the coquetry, the misera- 
ble eminence and self-satisfaction which have undermined 
the man and made him incapable of all simple and natural 
enjoyment. It is not too much to assert that many pupils of 
our Gymnasia are affected with this malady. Our literature 
is full of its products. It inveighs against its dissipation, 
and nevertheless at the same time cannot resist a certain kind 
of pleasure in it. Diabolical sentimentality I 

III. The Absolute Process of Religions Culture. 

§ 169. In comparing the stages of the theoretical and prac- 
tical culture of the religious feeling their internal correspon- 
dence appears. Feeling, as immediate knowledge, and the 
consecration of the sense by means of piety ; imagination with 
all its images, and the church services with their ceremonial 
observances ; finally, the comprehending of religion as the 
reconciliation with destiny, as the internal emancipation 
from the dominion of external events — all these correspond 
to each other. If we seize this parallelism all together, we 
have the progress which religion must make in its historical 
process, in which it (1) begins as natural; (2) goes on to his- 
torical precision, and (3) elevates this to a rational faith. 
These stages await every man in as far as he lives through 
a complete religious culture, but this may be for the indivi- 
dual a question of chance. 



Absolute Process of Religious Culture. 97 

§ 170. (1) A child has as yet no definite religious feel- 
ing. He is still only a possibility capable of manifold deter- 
minations. But, since he is a spirit, the essence of religion 
is active in him, though as yet in an unconscious form. The 
substance of spirit attests its presence in every individual, 
through his mysterious impulse toward the absolute and 
towards intercourse with God. This is the initiatory stage 
of natural religion, which must not be confounded with the 
religion which makes nature the object of worshi}) (fetich- 
ism, &c.) 

§ 171. (2) But while the child lives into this in his internal 
life, he comes in contact with definite forms of religion, and 
will naturally, through the mediation of the family, be intro- 
duced to some one of them. His religious feeling takes now 
a particular direction, and he accepts religion in one of its 
historical forms. This positive religion meets the precise 
want of the child, because it brings into his consciousness, 
by means of teaching and sacred rites, the principal elements 
which are found in the nature of religion. 

§ 172. (3) In contradistinction to the natural basis of reli- 
gious feeling, all historical religions rest on the authoritative 
basis of revelation from God to man. They address them- 
selves to the imagination, and offer a system of objective 
forms of worship and ceremonies. But spirit, as eternal, as 
self -identical, cannot forbear as thinking activity to sub- 
ject the traditional religion to criticism and to compare it as 
a phenomenal existence. From this criticism arises a reli- 
gion which satisfies the demands of the reason, and which, 
by means of insight into the necessity of the historical pro- 
cess, leads to the exercise of a genuine toleration towards its 
many-sided forms. This religion mediates between the unity 
of the thinking consciousness and the religious content, while 
this content, in the history of religious feeling, appears theo- 
retically as dogma, and practically as the command of an 
absolute and incomprehensible authority. It is just as sim- 
ple as the unsophisticated natural religious feeling, but its 
simplicity is at the same time master of itself. It is just as 
specific in its determinations as the historical religion, but 
its determinateness is at the same time universal, since it is 
worked out by the thinking reason. 

8 



98 Absolute Process of Religious Culture. 

§ 173. Education must superintend the development of the 
religious consciousness towards an insight into the necessary 
consequence of its different stages. Nothing is more absurd 
than for the educator to desire to avoid the introduction of 
a positive religion, or a definite creed, as a middle stage be- 
tvi^een the natural beginning of religious feeling and its end 
in philosophical culture. Only when a man has lived through 
the entire range of one-sided phases — through the crudeness 
of such a concrete individualizing of religion, and has come 
to recognize the universal nature of religion in a special form 
of it which excludes other forms — only when the spirit of a 
congregation has taken him into its number, is he ripe to 
criticize religion in a conciliatory spirit, because he has then 
gained a religious character through that historical experi- 
ence. The self-comprehending universality must have such 
a solid basis as this in the life of the man ; it can never form 
the beginning of one's culture, but it may constitute the end 
Avhich turns back again to the beginning. Most men remain 
at the historical stand-point. The religion of reason, as that 
of the minority, constitutes in the different religions the invi- 
sible church, which seeks by progressive reform to purify 
these religions from superstition and unbelief. It is the duty 
of the state, by making all churches equal in the sight of the 
law, to guard religion from the temptation of impure motives, 
and, through the granting of such freedom to religious indi- 
viduality, to help forward the unity of a rational insight into 
religion which is distinct from the religious feeling only in 
its form, not in its content. Not a philosopher, but Jesus 
of Nazareth freed the world from all selfishness and all 
bondage. 

§ 174. With this highest theoretical and practical emanci- 
pation, the general work of education ends. It remains now 
to be shown how the general idea of Education shapes its 
special elements into their appropriate forms. From the na- 
ture of Pedagogics, which concerns itself with man in his 
entirety, this exposition belongs partly to the history of cul- 
ture in general, partly to the history of religion, partly to the 
philosophy of history. The pedagogical element in it always 
lies in the ideal which the spirit of a nation or of an age cre- 
ates out of itself, and which it seeks to realize in its j^outh. 



( 99 ) 



THIRD PART. 
Particular Systems of Education. 

§ 175. The definite actuality of Education originates in the 
fact that its general idea is individualized, according to its 
special elements, in a specific statement which we call a 
pedagogical principle. The number of these principles is 
not unlimited, but from the idea oi: Education contains only 
a certain number. If we derive them therefore, we derive at 
the same time the history of Pedagogics, which can from its 
very nature do nothing else than make actual in itself the 
possibilities involved in the idea of Education. Such a deri- 
vation may be called an d priori construction of history, but 
it is different from what is generally denoted by this term in 
not pretending to deduce single events and characters. All 
empirical details are confirmation or illustration for it, but it 
does not attempt to seek this empirical element d priori. 

— The history of Pedagogics is still in the stage of infancy. 
At one time it is taken up into the sphere of Politics; at an- 
other, into that of the history of Culture. The productions 
of some of the most distinguished writers on the subject are 
now antiquated. Cramer of Stralsund made, in 1832, an ex- 
cellent beginning in a comprehensive and thorough history of 
Pedagogy ; but in the beginning of his second part he dwelt 
too long upon the Greeks, and lost himself in too wide an expo- 
sition of practical Philosophy in general. Alexander Kapp 
has given us excellent treatises on the Pedagogics of Aris- 
totle and Plato. But with regard to modern Pedagogics we 
have relatively very little. Karl v. Raumer, in 1843, be- 
gan to publish a history' of Pedagogics since the time of the 
revival of classical studies, and has accomplished much of 
value on the biographical side. But the idea of the general 
connection and dependence of the several manifestations has 
not received much attention, and since the time of Pestalozzi 
books have assumed the character of biographical confes- 



100 Particular Systems of Education. 

sions. Strumpell, in 1843, developed the Pedagogics of Kant,. 
Ficlite, and Herbart. — 

§ 176. Man is educated by man for humanity. This is the 
fundamental idea of all Pedagogics. But in the shaping of 
Pedagogics we cannot begin with the idea of humanity as 
such, but only with the natural form in which it. primarily 
manifests itself — that of the nation. But the naturalness of 
this principle disappears in its development, since nations 
appear in interaction on each other and begin dimly to per- 
ceive their unity of species. The freedom of spirit over na- 
ture makes its appearance, but to the spirit explicitly in the 
transcendent form of abstract theistic religion, in which God 
appears as the ruler over Nature as merely dependent ; and 
His chosen people plant the root of their nationality no 
longer in the earth, but in this belief. The unity of the 
abstractly natural and abstractly spiritual determinateness 
is the concrete unity of the spirit with nature, in which it 
recognizes nature as its necessary organ, and itself as in its 
nature divine. Spirit in this stage, as the internal presuppo- 
sition of the two previously named, takes up into itself on 
one hand the phase of nationality, since this is the form of its 
immediate individualization; but it no longer distinguishes 
between nations as if they were abstractly severed the one 
from the other, as the Greeks shut out all other nations 
under the name of barbarians. It also takes up into itself 
the phase of spirituality, since it knows itself as spirit, 
and knows itself to be free from nature, and yet it does not 
estrange itself as the Jews did in their representation of pure 
spirit, in reference to which nature seems to be only the work 
of its caprice. Humanity knows nature as its own, because 
it knows the Divine spirit and its creative energy manifest- 
ing itself in nature and history, as also the essence of its own 
spirit. Education can be complete only with Christianity as 
the religion of humanity. 

§ 177. We have thus three different systems of religion — 
(1) the National ; (2) the Theocratic ; and (3) the Humanita- 
rian. The first works in harmony with nature since it educates 
the individual as a type of his species. The original nation- 
ality endeavors sharply to distinguish itself from others, and 
to impress on each person the stamp of its uniform type. 



System of National EducaMon. 101 

One individual is like every other, or at least should be so. 
The second system in its manner of manifestation is identical 
with the lirst. It even marks the national difference more 
emphatically ; but the ground of the uniformity of the indi- 
viduals is with it not merely the natural common interest, 
but it is the consequence of the spiritual unity, which ab- 
stracts from nature, and as histor}^, satisfied with no present, 
hovers continually outside of itself between past and future. 
The theocratic system educates the individual as the servant 
of God. He is the true Jew only in so far as he is this ; the 
genealogical identity with the father Abraham is a condition 
but not the principle of the nationality. The third system 
liberates the individual to the enjoyment of freedom as his 
essence, and educates the human being within national lim- 
its which no longer separate but unite, and, in the conscious- 
ness that each individual, without any kind of mediation, 
has a direct relation to God, makes of him a man who knows 
himself to be a member of the spiritual world of humanity. 
We can have no fourth system beyond this. From the side 
of the State-Pedagogics we might characterize these sys- 
tems as that of the nation-State, the God-State, and the 
humanity-State. From the time of the establishment of the 
last, no one nation can attain to any sovereignty over the 
others. By means of the world-religion of Christianity, the 
education of nations has come to the point of taking for its 
ideal, man as determining himself according to the demands 
of reason. 

First Division. 
the system of national, education. 

§ 178. The National is the primitive system of education, 
since the family is the organic starting-point of all education, 
and is in its enlargement the basis of nationality". 

— Education is always education of the mind. Even unor- 
ganized nations, those in a state of nature, the so-called sav- 
age nations, are possessed of something more than a mere 
education of the body ; for, though they set much value upon 
gymnastic and warlike practice and give much time to them, 
they inculcate also respect for parents, for the aged, and 
for the decrees of the community. Education with them is 
essentially family training, and its content is natural love 



102- System of National Education. 

and reverence. We cannot deny that the finer forms of those 
to which we are accustomed are wanting. Besides, education 
among all these people of nature is very simple and much 
the same, though great differences in its management may 
exist arising from differences of situation or from tempera- 
ment of race. — 

§ 179. National Education is divided into three special sys- 
tems : (1) Passive, (2) Active, (3) Individual. It begins with 
the humility of an abstract subjection to nature, and ends 
with the arrogance of an abstract rejection of nature. 

§ 180. Man yields at first to the natural authority of the 
family ; he obeys unconditionally its behests. Then he sub- 
stitutes for the i'amily, as he goes on his culture, the artificial 
family of his caste, to whose rules he again unconditionall}^ 
yields. To dispense with this artificialty and this tyranny, 
at last he abstracts himself from the family and from culture. 
He flees from both, and becoming a monk he again subjects 
himself to the tyranny of his order. The monks presents to 
us the mere type of his species. 

§ 181. This absolute abstraction from nature and from cul- 
ture, this quietism of spiritual isolation, is the ultimate result 
of the Passive system. In opposition to this, the Active 
system seeks the positive vanquishing of naturalness. Its 
people are courageous. They attack other nations in order 
to rule over them as conquerors. They live for the continua- 
tion of their life after death, and build for themselves on this 
account tombs of granite. They brave the dangers of the sea. 
The abstract prose of the patriarchal-state, the fantastic chi- 
meras of the caste-state, the ascetic self-renunciation of the 
cloister- state, yield gradually to the recognition of actuality ; 
and the fundamental principle of Persian education consisted 
in the inculcation of veracity. 

§ 182. But the nationality which is occupied with simple, 
natural elements — other nations, death, the mystery of the 
ocean — may revert to the abstractions of the previous stage, 
which in education often take on cruel forms — nay, often 
truly horrible. First, when the spirit begins not only to sus- 
pect its true nature, but rather to recognize itself as the true 
essence ; and when the God of Light places as the motto on 
his temple the command to self-knowledge, the natural indi- 



System of Passim Education. 103 

viduality becomes free. Neither the passive nor the active 
system understands the free self-distinction of the individual 
from the rest. In them, to be an individuality is a betrayal 
of the very idea of their existence, and even the suspicion of 
such a charge suffices utterly and mercilessly to destroy the 
one to whom it refers. Even the solitary individuality of the 
despot is not the one-ness of free individuality : he is only 
an example of his kind; only in his kind is he singular. 
Nationality rises to individuality through the free dialectic 
of its race, wherein it dissolves its own presupposition. 

§ 183. Nevertheless individuality must always proceed 
from naturalness. Esthetically it seeks nature, but the na- 
ture of the activity itself, in order, by penetrating it with 
mind, to make of it a work of art ; practically it seeks it, 
partly to disdain it in gloomy resignation, partly to enjoy it 
in excessive sensual ecstasy, demoniacally to heighten the 
extravagance of its own internal feeling in wild revels. 

— The Germans were not savage in the common signification 
of this term. They were men each one of whom constituted 
himself willingly a centre for others, or, if this was not the 
case, renounced them in proud self-sufliciency. All the glory 
and all the disgrace of our race lies in the power of individu- 
alizing which is divinely breathed into our veins. As a natu- 
ral element, if this be not controlled, it degenerates easily 
into intractableness, into violence. The Germans need there- 
fore, in order to be educated, severe service, the imposition of 
difiicult tasks ; and for this reason they appropriate to them- 
selves, now the Roman law, now the Greek philology, now 
Gallic usages, &c., in order to work off their superfluous 
strength in such opposition. The natural reserve of the Ger- 
man found its solvent in Christianity. By itself, as the his- 
tory of the German race shows, it would have been destroyed 
in vain distraction. First of all, the German race, in the con- 
fidence of its immediate consciousness, ventured forth upon 
the sea, and managed the ship upon its waves as if they rode 
a charger.— 

FIRS T G R (^) U I' . 
THE SYSTEM OF PASSIVE EDUCATIOX. 

§ 184. All education desires to free man from his finitude, 
to make him ethical, to unite him with God. It begins there- 



104 Family Eclucation. 

fore with a negative relation to naturalness, hut at once falls 
into a contradiction of its aim, which is to convert the oppo- 
sition to nature into a natural necessity. Spirit subjects the 
individual (1) to the rule of the family as naturally spiritual ; 
(2) to the rule of the caste as to a principle in itself spiritual, 
mediated through the division of labor, which it neverthe- 
less, through its power of being inherited, joins again to the 
family; (3) to the abstract self-determination of the monkish 
quietism, which turns itself away as well from the family as 
from work, and constitutes this flight from nature and his- 
tory, this absolute passivity, into an educational ideal. 

— We shall not here enter into the details of this system, 
but simply endeavor to remove from their differences the 
want of clearness which is generally found involved in any 
mention of them, so that the phrases of hierarchical and 
theocratical education are used without any historical accu- 
racy. 

I. Family Educalioii. 

% 185. The Family, as the organic starting-point of all edu- 
cation, makes the beginning. The nation looks upon itself as 
a family. Among all unorganized people education is family- 
education, though they are not conscious of its necessity. 
Identical in principle with these people, but distinguished 
from them in its consciousness of it, the Chinese nation, in 
their laws, regulations, and customs, have constituted the 
family the absolute basis of their life and the only principle 
of their education. 

§ 186. The natural element of the family is found in mar- 
riage and relationship; the spiritual, in love. We may call 
the nature of family feeling which is the immediate unity of 
both elements, by the name of Piet}^ In so far as this ap- 
pears not merely as a substantial feeling but at the same 
time as law, there arises from it the subordination of the 
abstract obedience of the woman as wife to the husband, of 
children to the parents, of the j^ounger children to the elder. 
In this obedience man lirst renounces his self-will and his 
natural roughness; he learns to master his passions, and to 
conduct himself with deferential gentleness. 

— Wiien the principle ruling the family is transferred to 
political relations, there arises the tyranny of the Chinese 



Caste Education. 105 

state, wliicli cannot be fully treated here. We find every- 
wljere in it an analogical relation to that of parents and chil- 
dren. In China the ruler is the father and mother of the 
country; the civil officers are representatives of a paternal 
authority, &c. It follows that in school the children will be 
ranked according to their age. The authority of parents over 
children is according to the principle entirely unconditional, 
but in actuality very mild. The abandonment of daughters 
by the poorest classes in the great cities is not objected to, 
for the government rears the children in orphan asylums, 
where they are cared for by nurses appointed b}^ the state. — 

§ 187. The distinction of these relations which are condi- 
tioned by nature takes on the external shape of a definite 
ceremonial, the learning of which is a chief element of edu- 
cation. In conformity with the naturalness of the whole 
principle all crimes against it are punished by whipping, 
which does not necessarily entail dishonor. In order to lead 
man to the mastery of himself and to obedience to those who 
are naturally set over him, education develops an endless 
number of fragmentary maxims to keep attention ever watch- 
ful over himself, and his behavior always fenced in by a code 
of prescriptions. 

— AVe find in such moral sentences the substance of what 
is called, in China, Philosoph}^ — 

§ 188. The theoretical education includes Reading, Writ- 
ing — i.e. painting the letters with a brush — Arithmetic, and 
the making of verses. But the ability to do these things is 
not looked at as means of culture but as ends in themselves, 
and to fit one therefore for the undertaking of state offices. 
The Chinese possess formally all the means for literary cul- 
ture — printing, libraries, schools, and academies ; but the 
worth of these is not great. Their value has been often over- 
rated because of their external resemblance to those found 

among us. 

II. Caste Education. 

% 189. The members of the Family are certainly imme- 
diately distinguished among each other as to sex and age, but 
this difference is entirely immaterial as far as the nature of 
their employment goes. In China, therefore, every man can 
attain any position ; he who is of humblest birth in the great 



106 Caste Education. 

state-family can climb to the Mgliest honor. But the pro- 
gress of spirit now becomes so mediated that the division of 
labor shall be made the j)rinoiple on which a new distinction 
shall arise in the family : each one shall perfect himself only 
in that labor which was allotted to him as his own through 
his birth into a particular famil}-. This fatalism (caste- 
distinction) breaks up the life, but increases its tension, for 
spirit works on the one hand towards the deepening of its 
distinctions ; on the other, towards leading them back into 
the unity which the natural determining directly opposes. 

§ 190. The chief work of education thus consists in teach- 
ing each one the rights and duties of his caste so that he 
shall act only exactly within their limits, and not pollute him- 
self by passing beyond them. As the family-state concerns 
itself with fortifying the natural distinction by a far-reaching 
and vigorous ceremonial, so the caste-state must do the same 
with the distinction of class. A painful etiquette becomes 
more and more endless in its requisitions the higher the caste, 
in order to make the isolation more sharply defined and more 
perceptible. 

— This feature penetrates all exclusively caste-education.. 
The aristocracy exiles itself on this account from its native 
country, speaks a foreign language, loves its literature, 
adopts foreign customs, lives in foreign countries — in Italy,. 
Paris, &c. In this way man becomes distinguished from oth- 
ers. But that man should strive thus to distinguish himself 
has its justification in the mystery of his birth, and this is 
assuredly always the princii)le of the caste-state in which it 
exists. The castes lead to genealogical records, which are 
of the greatest importance in determining the destinj^ of the 
individual. The Brahmin may strike down one of a k>wer 
caste who has defiled him by contact, without becoming 
thereby liable to punishment ; rather would he be to blame 
if he did not commit the murder. Thus formerly was it with 
the officer who did not immediately kill the citizen or the 
common soldier who struck him a blow, &c. — 

§ 191. The East Indian culture is far deeper and richer than 
the Chinese. The theoretical culture includes Reading, Writ- 
ing, and Arithmetic ; but these are subordinate, as mere 
means for the higher activities of Poetry, Speculation, Sci- 



Buddliistic Education. 107 

ence, and Art. The practical education limits itself strictly 
by tlie lines of caste, and since the caste system constitutes a 
whole in itself, and each for its permanence needs the others, 
it cannot forbear giving utterance suggestively to what is 
universally human in the free soul, in a multitude of fables 
(Hitopadesa) and aj)othegms (sentences of Bartrihari). Espe- 
cially for the education of princes is a mirror of the world 
sketched out. 

— Xenophon's C3^ropedia is of Greek origin, but it is Indian 
in its thought. — 

III. Monkisli Education. 

§ 192. Family Education demands unconditional obedience 
towards parents and towards all who stand in an analogous 
position. Caste Education demands unconditional obedience 
to the duties of the caste. The family punishes by whip- 
ping; the caste, by excommunication, by loss of honor. The 
opposition to nature appears in both systems in the form of 
a rigid ceremonial, distinguishing between the differences 
arising from nature. The family as well as the caste has 
within it a manifold fountain of activity, but it has also just 
as manifold a limitation of the individual. Spirit is forced, 
therefore, to turn against nature in general. It must become 
indifferent to the family. But it must also oppose history, 
and the fixed distinctions of division of labor as necessitated 
by nature. It must become indifferent to work and the pleas- 
ure derived from it. That it may not be conditioned either 
by nature or by history, it denies both, and makes its action 
to consist in producing an abstinence from all activity. 

§ 193. Such an indifference towards nature and history 
produces the education which we have called monkish. 
Those who support this sect care for food, clothing, and 
shelter, and for these material contributions, as the laity, 
receive in return from those who live this contemplative 
life the spiritual contribution of confidence in the blessings 
which wait upon ascetic contemplation. The family institu- 
tion as well as the institution of human labor is subordi- 
nated to abstract isolation, in which the individual lives only 
for the purification of his soul. All things are justified by 
this end. Castes are found no more ; only those are bound 



108 BuddJdstic Education — System ofActwe Education. 

to the observance of a special ceremonial wiio as nuns or 
monks subject themselves to the unconditional obedience to 
the rules of the cloister, these rules solemnly enjoining on 
the negative side celibacy and cessation from business, and 
on the positive side prayer and perfection. 

§ 194. In the school of the Chinese Tao-tse, and in the com- 
mand to the Brahmin after he has established a family to 
become a recluse, we find the transition as it actually exists 
to the Buddhistic Quietism which has covered the rocky 
heights of Thibet with countless cloisters, and reared the peo- 
ple who are dependent upon it into a childlike amiability, 
into a contented repose. Art and Science have here no value 
in themselves, and are regarded only as ministering to reli- 
gion. To be able to read in order to mutter over the prayers 
is desirable. With the premeditated effort in the state of a 
monk to reduce self to nothing as the highest good, the sys- 
tem of passive education attains its highest point. But the 
spirit cannot content itself in this abstract and dreamy ab- 
sence of all action, though it demands a high stage of cul- 
ture, and it has recourse therefore to action, partly on the 
positive side to conquer nature, partly to double its own 
existence in making history. Inspired with affirmative cour- 
age, it descends triumphantly from the mountain heights, 
and fears secularization no more. 

SECOND GROUP. 
THE SYSTEM OF ACTIVE EDUCATION. 

§ 195. Active Education elevates man from his abstract 
subjection to the family, the caste, asceticism, into a concrete 
activity with a definite aim which subjects those elements as 
phases of its mediation, and grants to each individual inde- 
pendence on the condition of his identity with it. These 
aims are the military state, the future after death, and in- 
dustry. There is always an element of nature present from 
which the activity proceeds ; but this no longer appears, 
like the family, the caste, the sensuous egotism, as imme- 
diately belonging to the individual, but as something outside 
of himself which limits him, and, as his future life, has an 
internal relation to him, yet is essential to him and assigns 
to him the object of his activity. The Persian has as an 



Military Education. 109 

object of conquest, other nations ; the Egyptian, death; the 
Phoenician, the sea. 

1. Military Education. 

§ 196. That education whicli would emancipate a nation 
from the passivity of abstraction must throw it into the midst 
of an historical activity. A nation finds not its actual limits 
in its locality : it can forsake this and wander far away from 
it. Its true limit is made by another nation. The nation 
which knows itself to be actual, turns itself therefore against 
other nations in order to subject them and to reduce them 
to the condition of mere accidents of itself. It begins a 
system of conquest whicli has in itself no limitations, but 
goes from one nation to another, and extends its evil course 
indefinitely. The final result of this attack is that it finds 
itself attacked and conquered. 

— The early history of the Persian is twofold : the patriar- 
chal in the high valleys of Iran, and the religio-hierarchical 
among the Medes. We find under these circumstances a 
repetition of the principal characteristics of the Chinese, In- 
dian, and Buddhist educations. In ancient Zend there were 
also castes. Among the Persians themselves, as they de- 
scended from their mountains to the conquest of other 
nations, there was properly only a military nobility. The 
priesthood was subjected to the royal power which repre- 
sented the absolute power of actuality. Of the Persian kings, 
Cyrus attacked Western Asia; Cambyses, Africa; Darius 
and Xerxes, Europe ; until the reaction of the spiritually 
higher nationality did not content itself with self-preserva- 
tion, but under the Macedonian Alexander made the attack 
on Persia itself. — 

§ 197. Education enjoined upon the Persians (1) to speak 
the truth ; (2) to learn to ride and to use the bow and 
arrow. There is implied in the first command a recognition 
of actuality, the negation of all dreamy absorption, of all 
fantastical inde termination ; and in this light the Persian, in 
distinction from the Hindoo, appears to be considerate and 
reasonable. In the second command is implied warlike prac- 
tice, but not that of the nomadic tribes. The Persian fights 
on horseback, and thus appears in distinction from the Indian 



110 Priestly E ducat ion. 

hermit seclusion and the quietism of the Lamas as restless 
and in constant motion. 

— The Family increases in value as it rears a large number 
of warriors. Many children were a blessing. The king of 
Persia- gave a premium for all children over a certain num- 
ber. Nations were drawn in as nations by war ; hence the 
immense multitude of a Persian army. Everything — family, 
business, possessions— -must be regardlessly sacrificed to the 
one aim of war. Education, therefore, cultivated an uncon- 
ditional, all-embracing obedience to the king, and the slight- 
est inclination to assert an individual independence was high 
treason and was punished with death. In China, on the con- 
trary, duty to the family is paramount to duty to the state, 
or rather is itself duty to the state. The civil officer who 
mourns the loss of one of his family is released during the 
period of mourning from the duties of his function. — 

§ 198. The theoretical education, which was limited to read- 
ing, writing, and to instruction, was, in the usages of culture, 
in the hands of the Magians, the number of whom was esti- 
mated at eighty thousand, and who themselves had enjoyed 
the advantages of a careful education, as is shown by their 
gradation into Herbeds, Molieds, and Destur-Moheds ; i.e. into 
apprentices, journeymen, and masters. The very fundamen- 
tal idea of their religion was military ; it demanded of men 
to fight on the side of the king of light, and guard against the 
prince of darkness and evil. It gave to him thus the honor 
of a free position between the world- moving powers and 
the possibility of a self-creative destiny, by which means 
vigor and chivalrous feeling were developed. Religion trained 
the activity of man into actualization on this planet, increas- 
ing b}^ its means tlie dominion of the good, by purifying the 
water, by planting trees, by extirpating troublesome wild 
beasts. Thus it increased bodily comfort, and no longer, like 
the monk, treated this as a mere negative. 

II. Priestly Education. 

% 190. War has in death its force. It produces this, and 
by its means decides who shall serve and who obey. But the 
nation that finds its activity in war, though it makes death 
its absolute means, yet finds its own limit in 'death. Other 



Priestly Education. Ill 

nations are only its boundaries, which it can overj^ass in 
fighting with and conquering them. But death itself it can 
never escape, whether it come in the sands of the desert — 
which buried for Cambyses an army which he sent to the 
oracle of the Libyan Ammon — or in the sea, that scorns the 
rod of the angry despot, or by the sword of the freeman who 
guards his household gods. On this account, that people 
stands higher that in the midst of life reflects on death, or 
rather lives for it. The education of such a nation must be 
priestlj^ because death is the means of the transition to the 
future life, aud consequently equivalent to a new birth, and 
becomes a religious act. Neither the family-state, nor the 
caste-state, nor the monkish nor military-state, are hierar- 
chies in the sense that the leading of the national life by a 
priesthood produces. But in Egypt this was actually the 
case, because the chief educational tribunal was the death- 
court which concerned only the dead,Nin awarding to them or 
denying them the honor of burial as the result of their whole 
life, but in its award affected also the honor of the surviv- 
ing family. 

§ 200. Greneral education here limited itself to imparting the 
ability to read, write, and calculate. Special education con- 
sisted properly only in an habitual living into a delinite busi- 
ness within the circle of the Family. In this fruitful and warm 
land the expense of supporting children was very small. The 
division into classes was without the cruel features of the In- 
dian civilization, and life itself in the narrow Mle valley was 
very social, very rich, very full of eating and drinking, while 
the familiarity with death heightened the force of enjoyment. 
In a stricter sense only, the warriors, the priests, and the kings, 
had, properly speaking, an education. The aim of life, which 
was to determine in death its eternal [future, to secure for 
itself a passage into the still kiugdom of Amenth, manifested 
itself externally in the care which they expended on the pre- 
servation of the dead shell of the immortal soul, and on this 
account worked itself out in building tombs which should 
last for ever. The Chinese builds a wall to secure his family - 
state from attack ; the Hindoo builds pagodasjfor his gods ; 
the Buddhist erects for himself monastic cells ; the Persian 



112 Industrial Education. 

constructs in Persepolis the tomb of Ms kings, where they 
may retire in the evening of their lives after they have rioted 
in Ecbatana, Babylon, and Susa ; but the Egyptian builds 
his own tomb, and carries on war only to protect it. 

III. Indus trial ■Education . 

§ 201. The system of active education was to find its solu- 
tion in a nation which wandered from the coast of the Red 
Sea to the foot of the Lebanon mountains on the Mediterra- 
nean, and ventured forth upon the sea which before that time 
all nations had avoided as a dangerous and destructive ele- 
ment. The Phoenician was industrial, and needed markets 
where he could dispose of the products of his skill. But 
while he sought for them he disdained neither force nor de- 
ceit ; he planted colonies ; he stipulated that he should have 
in the cities of other nations a portion for himself; he urged 
the nations to adopt his pleasures, and insensibly introduced 
among them his culture and even his religion. The educa- 
tion of such a nation must have seemed profane, because it 
fostered indifference towards family and one's native land, 
and made the restless and passionate activity subservient to 
gain. The understanding and usefulness rose to a higher 
dignity. 

§ 202. Of the education of the Phoenicians we know only 
so much as to enable us to conclude that it was certainly va- 
rious and extensive : among the Carthaginians, at least, that 
their children were practised in reading, writing, and arith- 
metic, in religious duties ; secondly, in a trade ; and, finally, 
in the use of arms, is not improbable. Commerce became 
with the Phoenicians a trade, the egotism of which makes 
men dare to plough the inhospitable sea, and to penetrate 
eagerly the horror of its vast distances, but yet to conceal 
from other nations their discoveries and to wrap them in a 
veil of fable. 

— It is a beautiful testimony to the disposition of the 
Greeks, that Plato and others assign as a cause of the low 
state of Arithmetic and Mathematics among the Phoenicians 
and Egyptians the, want of a free and disinterested seizing 
of them. — 



Indimdual Education — Esthetic Education. 113 

THIRD GROUP. 
THE SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUAL. EDUCATIOX. 

§ 203. One-sided passivity as well as one-sided activity is 
subsumed under Individuality, which makes itself into its 
own end and aim. The Plia?nician made gain his aim ; his 
activity was of a utilistic character. Individuality as a peda- 
gogical principle is indeed egotistic in so far as it endeavors 
to achieve its own peculiarity, but it is at the same time 
noble. It desires not to haDe but to he. Individuality also 
begins as natural, but it elevates nature by means of art to 
ideality. The solution of beauty is found in culture, since 
this renounces the charm of appearance for the knowledge 
of the True. The {^esthetic individuality is followed by the 
practical, which has indeed no natural basis, but proceeds 
from an artificial basis as a state formed for a place of refuge. 
In order internally to create a unity in this, is framed a 
definite code of laws ; in order externally to assure it, the 
invincible warrior is demanded. Education is therefore, more 
exactly speaking, juristic and military practice. The moral- 
ity of the state is loosened as it reduces into its mechanism 
one nation after another, until the individuality, become dge- 
monic, makes its war-hardened legions tremble with -weak- 
ness. We characterize this individuality as da3monic because 
it desires recognition simply for its own sake. ISTot for its 
beauty and culture, not for its knowledge of business and its 
bravery, only for its peculiarity as such does it claim value, 
and in the effort to secure this it is ready to hazard life itself. 
In its naturally-growing existence this individuality is deep, 
but at the same time without self-limit. The nations educate 
themselves to this individuality when they destroy the world . 
of Roman world — that of self-limit and balance — which they 
find. 

I. yiEsihetic Education. 

% 204. The system of individual education begins with the 
transfiguration of the immediate individuality into beauty. 
On the side of nature this system is passion, for individuality 
is given through nature; but on the side of spirit it is active, 
for spirit must determine itself to restrain its measure as the 
essence of beauty. 

9 



114 Esthetic Education. 

§ 205. Here tlie individual is of value only in so far as he 
is beautiful. At first beauty is apprehended as natural, but 
then it is carried over into the realm of spirit, and the 
Good is posited as identical with the Beautiful. The ideal 
of aesthetic education remains always that there shall be also 
an external unity of the Good with the Beautiful, of Spirit 
with Nature. 

— We cannot here give in detail the history of Greek Edu- 
cation. It is the best known among us, and the literature in 
which it is worked out is very widely spread. Among the 
common abridged accounts we mention here only the works 
of Jacobs, of Cramer & Bekker's " Charinomos." We must 
content ourselves with mentioning the turning-points which 
follow from the nature of the principle. — 

§ 206. Culture was in Greece thoroughly national. Educa- 
tion gave to the individual the consciousness that he was a 
Greek and no barbarian, a free man and so subject only to 
the laws of the state, and not to the caprice of any one per- 
son. Thus the nationality was freed at once from the abstract 
unity of thefamil}^ and from the abstract distinction of caste, 
while it appeared with the manifold talents of individuals of 
different races. Thus the Dorian race held as essential, gym- 
nastics; the ^olians, music; the Ionics, poetry. TheiEolian 
individuality was subsumed in the history of the two others, 
so that these had to proceed in their development with an 
internal antagonism. The education of the Dorian race was 
national education in the fullest sense of the word; in it the 
education of all was the same, and was open to all, even 
including the young women ; among the Ionic race it was also 
in its content truly national, but in its form it was varied and 
unlike, and, for those belonging to various great families, 
private. The former, reproducing the Oriental phase of ab- 
stract unity, educated all in one mould ; the latter was the 
nursery of particular individualities. 

§ 207. (1) Education in the heroic age, without -any syste- 
matic arrangement on the subject, left each one perfectly 
free. The people related the histories of the adventures of 
others, and through their own gave material to othei-s again 
to relate stories of them. 

— The Greeks began where the last stage of the active 



^Esthetic Education. 115 

system of edncation ended — with piracy and the seizure of 
women. Swimming was a universal practice among the sea- 
dwelling Greeks, just as in England — the mistress of the 
ocean — rowing is the most prominent exercise among the 
young men, and public regattas are held. — 

§ 208. (2) In the period of state-cidture proper, education 
developed itself systematically; itnd gymnastics, music, and 
grammatics, or literary culture, constituted the general peda- 
gogical elemenls. 

§ 209. G3^mnastics aimed not alone to render the body 
strong and agile, but, far more, to produce in it a noble car- 
riage, a dignihed and graceful manner of appearance. Each 
one fashioned his body into a living, divine statue, and in the 
public games the nation crowned the victor. 

— Their love of beautiful boys is explicable not merely by 
their interest in beautiful forms, but especially by their 
interest in individuality. The low condition of the women 
could not lie at the foundation of it, for among the Spartans 
they were educated as nearly as possible like the men, and 
yet among them and the Cretans the love of boys was recog- 
nized in their legislation. To be without a beloved {ah-fjz)^ 
or a lover {£ia-n:wfKaz)^ was among them considered as dis- 
graceful as the degradation of the love by unchastity was 
contemptible. What charm was there, then, in love ? Mani- 
festly only beauty and culture. But that a person should be 
attracted by one and not by another can be accounted for 
only by the peculiar character, and in so far the boy-love 
and the man-friendship which sprang from it, among the 
Greeks, are very characteristic and noteworthy phenomena. — 

§ 210. It was the task of Music, by its rhythm and meas- 
ure, to fill the soul with well-proportioned harmony. So 
highly did the Greeks prize music, and so variously did they 
practise it, that to be a musical man meant the same with 
them as to be a cultivated man with us. Education in this 
respect was very painstaking, inasmuch as music exercises a 
very powerful influence in developing discreet behavior and 
self-possession into a graceful naturalness. 

— Among the Greeks we find an unrestricted delight in 
nature — a listening to her manifestations, the tone of which 
betrays the subjectivity of things as subjectivity. In com- 



116 Esthetic Education. 

parison with this tender sympathy with nature of the Greeks 
— who heard in the murmur of the fountains, in the dashing 
of the waves, in the rustling of the trees, and in the cry of 
animals, the voice of divine personality — the sight and hear- 
ino- of the Eastern nations for nature is dull. — 

o 

§ 211. The stringed instrument, the cithern, was preferred 
by the Greeks to all wind instruments because it was not ex- 
citing, and allowed the accompaniment of recitation or song, 
i.e. the contemporaneous activity of the spirit in poetry. 
Flute-playing was first brought from Asia Minor after the 
victorius progress of the Persian war, and was especially cul- 
tivated in Thebes. They sought in vain afterwards to oppose 
the wild excitement raised by its influence. 

§ 212. Grammar comprehended Letters {rpdfxiiara), i.e. the 
elements of literary culture, reading and writing. Much 
attention was given to correct expression. The Fables of 
^sop, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and later the tragic poets, 
were read, and partly learned by heart. The orators borrowed 
from them often the ornament of their commonplace remarks. 

§ 213. (8) The internal growth of what was peculiar to the 
Grecian State came to an end with the war for the Hegemony. 
Its dissolution began, and the philosophical period followed 
the political. The beautiful ethical life was resolved into 
thoughts of the True, Good, and Beautiful. Individuality 
turned more towards the internal, and undertook to subject 
freedom, the existing regulations, laws and customs, to the 
criticism of reason as to whether these were in and for them- 
selves universal and necessary. The Sophists, as teachers of 
Grammar, Rhetoric, and Philosophy, undertook to extend 
the cultivation of Reflection; and this introduced instability 
in the place of the immediate fixed state of moral customs. 
Among the women, the HetcBrcB undertook the same revo- 
lution ; in the place of the nbxvta !J.y]Tr^p appeared the beauty, 
who isolated herself in the consciousness of her charms and 
in the perfection of her varied culture, and exhibited herself 
to the public admiration. The tendency to idiosyncrasy often 
approached wilfulness, caprice and whimsicality, and opposi- 
tion to the national moral sense. A Diogenes in a tub became 
possible ; the soulless but graceful frivolity of an Alcibiades 
charmed, even though it was externally condemned; a Socra- 



Esthetic Education. 117 

tes completed the break in consciousness, and urged upon the 
system of the old morality the pregnant question, whether Vir- 
tue could be taught ? Socrates worked as a philosopher who 
was to educate. Pythagoras had imposed upon his pupils the 
abstraction of a common, exactly-defined manner of living. 
Socrates, on the contrary, freed his disciples — in general, those 
who had intercourse with him — leading them to the con- 
sciousness of their own individuality. He revolutionized the 
youth in that he taught them, instead of a thoughtless obe- 
dience to moral customs, to seek to comprehend their pur- 
pose in the world, and to rule their actions according to it. 
Outwardly he conformed in politics, and in war as at Mara- 
thon ; but in the direction of his teaching he was subjective 
and modern. 

§ 214. This idea, that Virtue could be taught, was realized 
especially by Plato and Aristotle; the former inclining to 
Dorianism, the latter holding to the principle of individuality 
in nearly the modern sense. As regards the pedagogical 
means — Gymnastics, Music, and Grammar — both philoso- 
phers entirely agreed. But, in the seizing of the pedagogical 
development in general, Plato asserted that the education of 
the individual belonged to the state alone, because the indi- 
vidual was to act wholly in the state. On the other hand, Aris- 
totle also holds that the state should conduct the education of 
its citizens, and that the individual should be trained for the 
interest of the state ; but he recognizes also the family, and 
the peculiarity of the individual, as positive powers, to which 
the state must accord relative freedom. Plato sacrificed the 
family to the state, and must therefore have sacred mar- 
riages, nurseries, and common and public educational insti- 
tutions. Each one shall do only that which he is fitted to do, 
and shall work at this only for the sake of perfecting it: to 
what he shall direct his energies, and in what he shall be 
instructed, shall be determined by the government, and the 
individuality consequently is not left free. Aristotle also 
will have for all the citizens the same education, which shall 
be common and public ; but he allows, at the same time, an 
independence to the family and self-determination to the in- 
dividual, so that a sphere of private life presents itself within 



118 Esthetic Education. 



» 



the state : a difference by means of which a much broader 
sway of individuality is possible. 

— These two philosophers have come to represent two very 
different directions in Pedagogics, which at intervals, in cer- 
tain stages of culture, reappear — the tyrannical guardianship 
of the state which assumes the work of education, tyrannical 
to the individual, and the free development of the liberal 
state-education, in opposition to idiosyncrasy and fate. 

§ 215. The principle of testhetic individuality reaches its 
highest manifestation when the individual,in the decay of pub- 
lic life, in the disappearance of all beautiful morality, iso- 
lates himself, and seeks to gain in his isolation such strength 
that he can bear the changes of external history around him 
with composure — "ataraxy." The Stoics sought to attain this 
end by turning their attention inward into pure internality, 
and thus, by preserving the self-determination of abstract 
thinking and willing, maintaining an identity with them- 
selves: the Epicureans endeavored to do the same, with this 
difference however, that they strove after a positive satisfac- 
tion of the senses by filling them with concrete pleasurable 
sensations. As a consequence of this, the Stoics isolated 
themselves in order to maintain themselves in the exclusive- 
ness of their internal unconditioned relation to themselves, 
while the Epicureans lived in companies, because they 
achieved the reality of their pleasure - seeking principle 
through harmony of feeling and through the sweetness of 
friendship. In so far the Epicureans weve Greeks and the 
Stoics Romans. With both, however, the beaut}^ of manifes- 
tation was secondary to the immobility of tlie inner feeling. 
The phistic attainment of the Good and tlie Beautiful was 
cancelled in the abstraction of thinking and feeling. This 
was the advent of the Roman principle among the Greeks. 

§ 216. The pedagogical significance of Stoicism and Epicu- 
reanism consists in this, that, after the moral life in public 
and in private were sundered from each other, tlie individual 
began to educate himself, through philosophical culture, into 
stability of character, for which reason the Roman emperors 
particularly disliked the Stoics. At many times, a resigna- 
tion to the Stoic philosophy was sufficient to make one sus- 



Practical Education. 119 

pected. But, at last, the noble emperor, in order to win him- 
self a hold ill tlie chaos of things, was forced himself to 
become a Stoic and to llee to the inaccessible stillness of the 
self-thinking activity and the self-moving will. Stoics and 
Epicureans had both what we call an ideal. The Stoics used 
the expression "kingdom"; as Horace says, sarcastically, 
" Sapiens rex est nisi — pituita molesta est.'''' 

II. Practical Education. 

§ 217. The truth of the solution of the beautiful individu- 
ality is the promise of the activity conformable to its pur- 
pose [i.e. teleological activity], which on the one hand con- 
siders carefully end and means, and on the other hand seeks 
to realize the end through the corresponding means, and in 
this deed subjects mere beauty of form. The practical indi- 
viduality is therefore externally conditioned, since it is not 
its own end like the Beautiful, whether Stoical or Epicurean, 
but has an end, and finds its satisfaction not so much in this 
after it is attained as in the striving for its attainment. 

§ 218. The education of this system begins with very great 
simplicity. But after it has attained its object, it abandons 
itself to using the results of aesthetic culture as a recreation 
without any specific object. What was to the Greeks a real 
delight in the Beautiful became therefore with the Romans 
simply an esthetic amusement, and as such must finally be 
wearisome. The earnestness of individuality made itself in 
mysticism into a new aim, which was distinguished from the 
original one in that it concealed in itself a mystery and ex- 
acted a theoretically aesthetic practice. 

§ 219. (1) The first epoch of Roman education, as properly 
Roman, was the juristic-military education of the republic. 
The end and aim of the Roman was Rome; and Rome, as 
from the beginning an eclectic state, could endure only while 
its laws and external politics were conformable to some end. 
It bore the same contradiction within itself as in its external 
attitude. This forced it into robbery, and the plebeians were 
related to the patricians in the same way, for they robbed 
them gradually of all their privileges. On this account 
education directed itself partly to giving a knowledge of the 
Law, partly to communicating a capacity for war. The boys 



120 Practical Education. 

were obliged to commit to memory and recite the laws of the 
twelve tables, and all the youths were subject to military 
service. The Roman possessed no individuality of native 
growth, but one mediated through the intermingling of 
various fugitives, which developed a very great energy. 
Hence from the first he was attentive to himself, he watched 
jealously over the limits of his rights and the rights of oth- 
ers, measured his strength, moderated himself, and constant- 
ly guarded himself. In contrast with the careless cheerful- 
ness of the Greeks, he therefore appears gloomy. 

— The Latin tongue is crowded with expressions which 
paint presence of mind, effort at reflection, a critical attitude 
of mind, the importance of personal control : as gramtas mo- 
rum, sui compos esse, sihi constare, austeritas, mr strenuus, 
mr prohus, mtam. honestam gerere, sibimet ipse imperare, &c. 
The Etruscan element imparted to this earnestness an espe- 
cially solemn character. The Roman was no more, like the 
Greek, unembarrassed at naturalness. He was ashamed of na- 
kedness; 'yerdC'ZZ?i<^m,^'z^(^or, were genuinely Roman. Vitam 
prcBferre pudori was shameful. On the contrary, the Greek 
gave to Greeks a festival in exhibiting the splendor of his 
naked body, and the inhabitants of Crotona erected a statue 
to Philip only because he was so perfectly beautiful. Simply 
to be beautiful, only beautiful, was enough for the Greek. 
'But a Roman, in order to be recognized, must have done 
something for Rome : se hene de repuhlica mereri. — 

§ 220. In the first education of children the agency of the 
mother is especially influential, so that woman with the 
Romans took generally a more moral, a higher, and a freer 
position. It is worthy of remark that while, as the beautiful, 
she set the Greeks at variance, among the Romans, through 
her ethical authority, she acted as reconciler. 

§ 221. The mother of the Roman helped to form his cha- 
racter ; the father undertook the work of instruction. When 
in his fifteenth year the boy exchanged the toga prmtextata 
for the toga mrilis, he was usually sent to some relative, or 
to some jurist, as his guardian, to learn thoroughly, under 
his guidance, of the laws and of the state ; with the seven- 
teenth began military service. All education was for a long 
time entirely a private afi'air. On account of the necessity of 



Practical Education. ' 121 

a mechanical unity in work which war demands, the greatest 
stress was laid upon obedience. In its restricted sense edu- 
cation comprised Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic ; the last 
being, on account of its usefulness, more esteemed by the 
Romans than by the Greeks, who gave more time to Geome- 
try. The schools, very characteristically, were called Ludiy 
because their work was, in distinction from other practice, 
regarded simply as a recreation, as play. 

— The Roman recognized with pride this distinction be- 
tween the Greek and himself; Cicero's Introduction to his 
Essay on Oratory expresses it. To be practical was always 
the effort of the reflective character of the Romans, which 
was always placing new ends and seeking the means for 
their attainment; which loved moderation, not to secure 
beauty thereby, but respected it as a means for a happy suc- 
cess (^medium tenuere heati) ; which did not possess serene 
self-limitation, or acoippoavwj, but calculation quid valeant 
humeri, quid f err e recusent; but which, in general, went 
far bej^ond the Greeks in persistency of will, in constantia 
aiiimi. The schools were at first held publicly in shops ; 
hence the name trimum. Very significant for the Roman 
is the predicate which he conferred upon theoretical subjects 
when he called them artes hona-, optiDice, liherales, ingenudy 
&c., and brought forth the practical element in them. — 

§ 222, (2) But the practical education could no longer keep 
its ground after it had become acquainted with the aesthetic. 
The conquest of Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, made neces- 
sary, in a practical point of view, the acquisition of the Gre- 
cian tongue, so that these lands, so permeated with Grecian 
culture, migJit be thoroughly ruled. The Roman of family 
and property, therefore, tooK into his service Greek nurses 
and teachers who should give to his children, from their ear- 
liest years, Greek culture. It is, in the history of education, 
a great evil Avhen a nation undertakes to teach a foreign 
tongue to its youth. Then the necessity of trade with the 
Greeks caused the study of Rhetoric, so that not only in the 
deliberations of the senate and people, but in law, the ends 
might be belter attained. Whatever eftbrt the Roman gov- 
ernment made to prevent the invasion of the Greek rhetori- 
cian was all in vain. The Roman youth sought for this 



122 Practical Education. 

knowledge, which was so necessary to them in foreign lands, 
e.g. in the flourishing school of rhetoric on the island of 
Rhodes. At last, even the study of Philosophy commended 
itself to the practical Roman, in order that he might recover 
for himself confidence amid the disappointments of life. 
When his practical life did not bring him any result, he de- 
voted himself in his poverty to abstract contemplation. The 
Greeks would have Philosophy for its own sake; the ataraxy 
of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics even, desired the result 
of a necessary principle; but the Roman, on the contrary, 
wished to lift himself by philosophemes above trouble and 
misfortune. 

— This direction which Philosophy took is noteworth}^ not 
alone in Cicero and Seneca, but at the fall of the Roman em- 
pire, when Boethius wrote in his prison his immortal work on 
the consolations of Philosoph3^ — 

§ 223. The earnestness which sought a definite end degen- 
erated in the very opposite of activity with him who had no 
definite aim. The idleness of the wealth}^ Roman, who felt 
himself to be the lord of a limitless world, devoted itself to 
dissipation and desire for enjoyment, which, in its entire 
want of moderation, abused nature. The finest form of the 
extant education was that in helles-lettres, which also for the 
first time came to belong to the sphere of Pedagogics. There 
had been a degeneration of art in India and Greece, and also 
an artistic trifling. But in Rome there arose a pursuit of art 
in order to win a certain consideration in social position, and 
to create for one's self a recreation in the emptiness of a soul 
satiated with sensual debaucherj^ Such a seizing of art is 
frivolous, for it no longer recognizes its absoluteness, and 
subordinates it as a means to subjective egotism. Literary 
salons then appear. 

— In the introduction to his Cataline, Sallust has painted 
excellently this complete revolution in the Roman education. 
The younger Pliu}^ in his letters furnishes ample material to 
illustrate to us this pursuit of belles-lettres. In Nero it 
became idiotic. We should transgress our prescribed limits 
did we enter here into particulars. An analysis would show 
the perversion of the aesthetic into the practical, the sssthetic 
losing thereby its proper nature. But the Roman could not 



Practical Education. 123 

avoid this perversion, because, according to his original aim, 
he could not move except towards the utile et honestum. — 

§ 224. (3) But this pursuit of fine art, this aimless parade, 
must at last weary the Roman. He sought for himself again 
an object to which he could vigorously devote himself. His 
sovereignty was assured, and conquest as an object could no 
more charm him. The national religion had fallen with the 
destruction of the national individuality. The soul looked 
out over its historical life into an empty void. It sought to 
establish a relation between itself and the next world by 
means of daemonic forces, and in place of the depreciated na- 
tionality and its religion we find the eclecticism of the mystic 
society. There were, it is true, in national religions certain 
secret signs, rites, words, and meanings ; but now, for the first 
time in the history of the world, there appeared mysteries as 
pedagogical societies, which concerned themselves only with 
private rhings and were indifferent to nationality. Every- 
thing was profaned by the roughness of violence. Man be- 
lieved no longer in the old gods, and the superstitious faith 
in ghosts became only a thing fit to frighten children with. 
Thus man took refuge in secrecy, which had for his satiety 
a piquant charm. 

§ 225. The education of the mysteries was twofold, theo- 
retical and practical. In the theoretical we find a regular 
gradation of symbols and symbolical acts through which one 
seemed gradually to attain to the revelation of the secret ; 
the practical contained a regular gradation of ascetic actions 
alternating with an abandonment to wild orgies. Both raised 
one from the rank of the novice to that of the initiated. In 
the higher orders they formed an ethical code of laws, and 
this form Pedagogics has retained in all such secret culture, 
fnutatis mutandis, down to the Illuminati. 

— In the Roman empire, its Persian element was the wor- 
ship of Mithras ; its Egyptian, that of Isis ; its Grecian, the 
Pythagorean doctrines. All these three, however, were much 
mingled with each other. The Roman legions, who really 
no longer had any native country, bore these artificial reli- 
gions throughout the whole world. The confusion of excite- 
ment led often to Somnambulism, which was not yet under- 
stood, and to belief in miracles, ApoUonius of Tyana, the 



124 Indimdual Education — Theocratic Education. 

messiali of Etlmicism, is the principal figure in this group ; 
and, in comparison with him, Jamblichus appears only as an 
enthusiast and Alexander of Abonoteichos as an impostor. 

III. Abstract I/idividifal Education. 

§ 226. What the despair of the declining nations sought 
. for in these mysteries was Individuality, which in its singu- 
larity is conscious of the universality of the rational spirit 
as its own essence. This individuality existed more imme- 
diately in the Germanic race, which nevertheless, on account 
of its nature, formed first in Christianity its true actualiza- 
tion. It can be here only pointed out that they most thor- 
oughly, in opposition to nature, to men, and to the gods, felt 
themselves to be independent ; as Tacitus says, '"'■Securi ad- 
xiersus liomines., securi adversus Deos.^^ This individuality, 
which had only itself for an end, must necessarily be destroy- 
ed, and was saved only by Christianity, which overcame and 
enlightened its demonic and defiant spirit. We cannot speak 
here of a system of Education. Respect for personality, the 
free acknowledgment of the claims of woman, the loyalty to 
the leader chosen by themselves, loyalty to their friends (the 
idea of fellowship), — these features should all be well-noted, 
because from them arose the feudalism of the middle ages.. 
What C?esar and Tacitus tell us of the education of the Ger- 
mans expresses only the emancipation of individuality, which 
in its immediate crudeness had no other form in which to 
manifest itself than wars of conquest. 

— To the Rom'an there was something daemonic in the 
German. He perceived dimly in him his future, his mas- 
ter. When the Romans were to meet the Cimbri and Teu- 
tons in the field, tlieir commander had first to accustom them 
for a whole day to the fearful sight of the wild, giant-like 
forms. 

Secoxd Division. 
the system of theocratic education. 

§ 227. The system of IS'ational Education founded its first 
stage on the substantial basis of the family- spirit; its second 
stage on the division of the nation by means of division of 
labor vrhich it makes permanent in castes ; its third stage 
presents the free opposition of the laity and clergy; in its 



System of Theocratic Education. 125 

next phase it makes war, immortality, and trade, by turns, 
its end ; thirdly, it posits beauty, patriotic youth, and the 
immediateness of individuality, as the essence of mankind, 
and at last dissolves the unity of nationality in the con- 
sciousness that all nations are really one since they are all 
human beings. In the intermixture of races in the Roman 
world arises the conception of the human race, the genus Tiu- 
manum. Education had become eclectic : the Roman legions 
levelled the national distinctions. In the wavering of all 
objective morality, the necessity of self-education in order 
to the formation of character appeared ever more and more 
clearly ; but the conception, which lay at the foundation, was 
always, nevertheless, that of Roman, Greek, or German edu- 
cation. But in the midst of these nations another system had 
striven for development, and this did not base itself on the 
natural connection of nationality, but made this, for the first 
time, only a secondary thing, and made the direct relation 
of man to God its chief idea. In this system God himself is 
the teacher. He manifests to man His will as law, to which 
he must unconditionally conform for no other reason than that 
He is the Lord, and man His servant, who can have no other 
will than His. The obedience of man is therefore, in this sys- 
• tem, abstract until through experience he gradually attains to 
the knowledge that the will of God has in it the very essence 
of his own will. Descent, Talent, Events, Work, Beauty, Cour- 
age, — all these are indifferent things compared with the sub- 
jection of the human to the divine will. To be well-pleasing 
to God is almost the same as belief in Him. Without this ^ 
identity, what is natural in national descent is of no value. 
According to its form of manifestation, Judaism is below the 
Greek spirit. It is not beautiful, but rather grotesque. But 
in its essence, as the religion of the contradiction between 
the idea and its existence, it goes beyond nature, which it 
perceives to be established by an absolute, conscious, and 
reasonable Will ; while the Greek concealed from himself 
only mythically his dependence on nature, on his mother- 
earth. The Jews have been preserved in the midst of all 
other culture by the elastic power of the thought of God as 
One who was free from the control of nature. The Jews 
have a patriotism in common with the Romans. The Mac- 



126 System of Tlieocratic Education. ■ 

cabees, for example, were not inferior to the Romans in 
greatness. 

— Abraham is the genuine Jew because he is the genuinely 
faithful man. He does not hesitate to obey the horrible and 
inhuman command of his God, Circumcision was made the 
token of the national unity, but the nation may assimilate 
members to itself from other nations through this rite. The 
condition always lies in belief in a spiritual relation to which 
the relation of nationalit}' is secondary. The Jewish nation 
makes proselytes, and these are widely difierent from the 
Socii of the Romans or the Metoeci of the Athenians. — 

§ 228. To the man who knows Nature to be the work of 
a single, incomparable, rational Creator, she loses indepen- 
dence. He is negatively freed from her control, and sees in her 
only an absolute means. As opposed to the fanciful sensuous 
intuitions of Ethnicism, this seems to be a backward step, 
but for the emancipation of man it is a progress. He no 
longer fears Nature but her Lord, and admires Him so much 
that prose rises to the dignity of poetry in his telological 
contemplation. Since man stands over and beyond nature, 
education is directed to morality as such, and spreads itself 
out in innumerable limitations, by means of which the dis- 
tinction of man from nature is expressly asserted as a differ- 
ence. The ceremonial law appears often arbitrary, but in its 
prescriptions it gives man the satisfaction of placing himself 
as will in relation to will. For example, if he is forbidden 
to eat any specified part of an animal, the ground of this 
command is not merely natural — it is the will of the Deity. 
Man learns therefore, in his obedience to such directions, to 
free himself from his self-will, from his natural desires. This 
exact outward conformity to subjectivity is the beginning 
of wisdom, the purification of the will from all individual 
egotism. 

— The rational substance of the Law is found always in 
the Decalogue. Many of our modern much-admired au- 
thors exhibit a superficiality bordering on shallowness when 
they comment alone on the absurdity of the miracles, 
and abstract from the profound depth of the" moral strug- 
gle, and from the j)ractical rationality of the ten command- 
ments. — 



System of Tlieocratlc Education. 127 

§ 229. Education in this theocratical system is on one side 
patriarchal. The Family is very prominent, because it is 
considered to be a great happiness for the individual to be- 
long from his very earliest life lo the company of those who 
believe in the true God. On its other side it is hierarchical, 
as its ceremonial law develops a special office, which is to 
see that obedience is paid to its multifarious regulations. 
And, because these are often perfectly arbitrary, Education 
must, above all, practise the memory in learning them all. so 
that they may always be remembered. The Jewish mono- 
theism shares this necessity with the superstition of ethni- 
cism. 

§ 230. But the technique proper of the mechanism is not 
the most important pedagogical element of the theocracy. 
We find this in its historical significance, since its history 
throughout has a pedagogical character. For the people of 
God show us always, in their changing intercourse with their 
God, a progress from the external to the internal, from the 
lower to the higher, from the past to the future. Its history, 
therefore, abounds in situations very interesting in a peda- 
gogical point of view, and in characters which are eternal 
models. 

§ 231. (1) The will of God as the absolute authority is at 
first to them, as law, external. But soon God adds to the 
command to obedience, on one hand, the inducement of a 
promise of material prosperity, and on the other hand the 
threat of material punishment. The fulfilment of the law is 
also encouraged by reflection on the profit which it brings. 
But, since these motives are all external, tliey rise finally 
into the insight that the law is to be fulfilled, not on their 
account, but because it is the will of the Lord ; not alone be- 
cause it is conducive to our happiness, but also because it is 
in itself holy, and written in our hearts : in other words, man 
proceeds from the abstract legality, through the reflection of 
eudaemonism, to the internality of moral sentiment — the 
course of all education. 

— This last stand-point is especially represented in the 
excellent Gnomic of Jesus Sirach — a book so rich in pedago- 
gical insight, which paints with master-strokes the relations 
of husband and wife, parents and children, master and ser- 



128 8ystem of Theocratic Education. 

vaiits, friend and- friend, enemy and enemy, and the dignitj 
of labor as well as the necessity of its division. This price- 
less book forms a side-piece from the theocratic stand-point 
to the Republic of Plato and his laws on ethical govern- 
ment. — 

§ 232. (2) The progress from the lower to the higher ap- 
peared in the conquering of the natural individuality. Man, 
as the servant of Jehovah, must have no will of his own ; but 
seltish naturalness arrayed itself so much the more vigor- 
ously against the abstract "Thou shalt," allowed itself to 
descend into an abstraction from the Law, and often reached 
the most unbridled extravagance. But since the Law in 
inexorable might always remained the same, always per- 
sistent, in distinction from the inequalities of the deed of 
man, it forced him to come back to it, and to conform him- 
self to its demands. Thus he learned criticism, thus he rose 
from naturalness into spirit. This progress is at the same 
time a progress from necessity to freedom, because criticism 
always gradually opens a way for man into insight, so 
that he finds the will of Grod to be the truth of his own self- 
determination. Because God is one and absolute, there arises 
the expectation that His Will will become the basis for the 
will of all nations and men. The criticism of the understand- 
ing must recognize a contradiction in the fact that the will of 
the true God is the law of only one nation ; feared by other 
nations, moreover, by reason of their very worship of God as 
a gloomy mystery, and detested as odium generis liumani. 
And thus is developed the thought that the isolation of the 
believers will come to an end as soon as the other nations 
recognize their faith as the true one, and are received into it. 
Thus here, out of the deepest penetration of the soul into 
itself, as among the Romans out of the fusion of nations, we 
see appear the idea of the human race. 

§ 233. (3) The progress from the past to the future unfolded 
the ideal servant of God who fulfils all the Law, and so blots 
out the empirical contradiction that the "Thou shalt" of the 
Law attains no adequate actuality. This Prince of Peace, 
who shall gather all nations under his banner, can therefore 
have no other thing predicated of him than Holiness. He 
is not beautiful as the Greeks represented their ideal, not 



System of Humanitarian Education. 129 

brave and practical as was the venerated Virtus of the 
Romans; he does not place an infinite value on his indi- 
viduality as the German does: but he is represented as in- 
significant in appearance, as patient, as humble, as he who, 
in order to reconcile the world, takes upon himself the infir- 
mities and disgrace of all others. The ethnical nations harve 
only a lost Paradise behind them ; the Jews have one also 
before them. From this belief in the Messiah who is to come, 
from the certainty which they have of conquering with him, 
from the power of esteeming all things of small importance 
in view of such a future, springs the indestructible nature of 
the Jews. They ignore the fact that Christianity is the ne- 
cessary result of their own history. As the nation that is 
to be {des SelnsoUens), they are merely a historical nation, 
the nation among nations, whose education — whenever the 
Jew has not changed and corrupted its nature through mod- 
ern culture — is still always patriarchal, hierarchal, and mne- 
monic. 

Third Divisiox. 
THE SYSTEM OF HUMAKITARIAX EDUCATION. 

§ 234. The systems of national and theocratic education 
came to the same result, though by different wa3^s, and this 
result is the conception of a human race in the unity of which 
the distinctions of different nations find their Truth. But 
with them this result is only a conception, being a thing 
external to their actuality. They arrive at the painting of an 
ideal of the way in which the Messiah shall come. But these 
ideals exist only in the mind, and the actual condition of the 
people sometimes does not correspond to them at all, and 
sometimes only very relatively. The idea of spirit had in 
these presuppositions the possibility of its concrete actuali- 
zation ; one individual man must become conscious of the 
universality and necessity of the will as being the very es- 
sence of his own freedom, so that all heteronomy should be 
cancelled in the autonomy of spirit. Natural individuality 
appearing as national determinateness was still acknowl- 
edged, but was deprived of its abstract isolatio'i. The divine 
authority of the truth of the individual will is to be recog- 
nized, but at the same time freed from its estrangement 
towards itself. While Christ was a Jew and obedient to the 



130 System of Humanitarian Education. 

divine Law, he knew himself as the universal man who deter- 
mines himself to his own destiny ; and while only distin- 
guishing God, as subject, from himself, yet holds fast to the 
unity of man and God. The system of humanitarian educa- 
tion began to unfold from this principle, which no longer 
accords the highest place to the natural unity of national 
individuality, nor to the abstract obedience of the command 
of God, but to that freedom of the soul which knows itself 
to be absolute necessity. Christ is not a mere ideal of the 
thought, but is known as a living member of actual history, 
whose life, suiferings and death for freedom form the secu- 
ritj^ as to its absolute justification and truth. The {esthetic, 
philosophical, and political ideal are all found in the univer- 
sal nature of the Christian ideal, on which account no one of 
them appears one-sided in the life of Christ. The principle 
of Human Freedom excludes neither art, nor science, nor 
political feeling. 

§ 235. In its conception of man the humanitarian education 
includes both the national divisions and the subjection of all 
men to the divine law, but it will no longer endure that one 
should grow into an isolating exclusiveness, and another 
into a despotism which includes in it somewhat of the acci- 
dental. But this principle of humanity and human nature 
took root so slowly that its presuppositions were repeated 
within itself and were really conquered in this reproduction. 
These stages of culture were the Greek, the Roman, and the 
Protestant churches, and education was metamorphosed to 
suit the formation of each of these. 

— For the sake of brevity we would wish to close with these 
general definitions ; the unfolding of their details is inti- 
mately bound up with the history of politics and of civiliza- 
tion. We shall be contented if we give correctly the general 
whole. — 

§ 236. Within education we can distinguish three epochs : 
the monkish, the chivalric, and that education which is to fit 
one for civil life. Each of these endeavored to express all 
that belonged to humanity as such ; but it was only after the 
recognition of the moral nature of the Family, of Labor, of 
Culture, and of the conscious equal title of all men to their 
rights, that this became really possible. 



Epocli of Mo II hi sli Education. 131 

• I. The Epoch ojMonkish Education. 

§237. The Greek <JlLun]i seized the Christian principle 
still abstractly as deliveruuce from the world, and therefore, 
in the education proceedinu- from it, it arrived only at the 
negative form, positiiiy- the universality of the individual 
man as the renunciation of self. In the dogmatism of its 
teaching, as well as in tlie ascetic severity of its practical con- 
duct, it was a reproduction of the theocratic principle. But 
when this had assumed the form of national centralization, 
the Grreek Church dispensed \vitli this, and, as far as regards 
its form, it returned aiiaiii to the quietism of the Orient. 

§ 238. The monkish education is in general identical in all 
religions, in that, through the egotism of its way of living and 
the stoicism of its way df thinking, through the separation 
of its external existence and tlie mechanism of a thoughtless 
subjection to a general lule as well as to the special com- 
mand of superiors, it fosters a spiritual and bodily dulness. 
The Christian monachisni. therefore, as the fullilment of 
monachism in general, is at tlie same time its absolute dis- 
solution, because, in its merely abstracting itself from the 
world instead of affirmatively conquering it, it contradicts 
the very principle of (Jhristianity. 

§ 239. We must notice as the fundamental error of this 
whole system, that it does not in free individuality seek to 
produce the ideal of ilivine-humanity, but to copy in exter- 
nal reproduction its historical manifestation. Each human 
being must individually offer up as sacrifice his own indivi- 
duality. Each biography has its Bethlehem, its Tabor, and 
its Golgotha. 

§ 240. Monachism looks upon freedom from one's self and 
from the world which Cliristianity demands only as an ab- 
stract renunciation of self, which it seeks to compass, like 
Buddhism, by the vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, 
which must be taken l^y .-arh individual for all time. 

— This rejection of property, of marriage, and of self-will, 
is at the same time the negation of work, of the family, and 
of responsibility for (uie's actions. In order to avoid the 
danger of avarice and covetousness, of sensuality and of 
nepotism, of error and of guilt, monachism seizes the conve- 



132 Epoch of MoTikisli Education. 

nient way of abstract severance from all the objective world 
without being able fully to carry out this negation. Monkish 
Pedagogics must, in consequence, be very particular about 
an external separation of their disciples from the world, so 
as to make the work of abstraction from the world easier arid 
more decided. It therefore builds cloisters in the solitude of 
deserts, in the depth of forests, on the summits of mountains, 
and surrounds them with high walls having no apertures ; 
and then, so as to carry the isolation of the individual to its 
farthest possible extreme it constructs, within these cloisters, 
cells, in imitation of the ancient hermits — a seclusion the im- 
mediate consequence of which is the most limitless and most 
paltry curiosity. — 

§ 241. Theoretically the monkish Pedagogics seeks, by 
means of the greatest possible silence, to place the soul in a 
state of spiritual immobility, which at last, through the want 
of all variety of thought, goes over into entire apathy, and 
antipathy towards all intellectual culture. The principal 
feature of the practical culture consists in the misapprehen- 
sion that one should ignore Nature, instead of morally freeing 
himself from her control. As she again and again asserts 
herself, the monkish discipline proceeds to misuse her, and 
strives through fasting, through sleeplessness, through vol- 
untary self-inllicted pain and martyrdom, not only to subdue 
the wantonness of the flesh, but to destroy the love of life 
till it shall become a positive loathing of existence. In and 
for itself the object of the monkish vow — property, the fami- 
ly, and will — is not immoral. The vow is, on this account, 
very easy to violate. In order to prevent all temptation to 
this, monkish Pedagogics invents a system of supervision, 
partly open, partly secret, which deprives one of all freedom 
of- action, all freshness of thinking and of willing, and all 
poetry of feeling, by means of the perpetual shadow of spies 
and informers. The monks are well-versed in all police- 
arts, and the regular succession of the hierarchy spurs them 
on always to distinguish themselves in them. 

§ 242. The gloomy breath of this education penetrated all 
the relations of the Byzantine State. Even the education of 
the emperor was infected by it; and in the strife for freedom 
waged by the modern Greeks against the Turks, the Igumeni 



Epoch of OMvalriG Education. 133 

of the cloisters were the real leaders of the insurrection. The 
independence of individuality, as opposed to monkish ab- 
straction, more or less degenerates into the crude form of 
soldier and pirate life. And thus it happened that this prin- 
ciple was not left to appear merely as an exception, but to 
be built up positively into humanity ; and this the German 
world, under the guidance of the Roman Church, undertook 
to accomplish. 

II. The Epoch of Chivalric Education. 

% 243. The Romish Church negated the abstract substan- 
tiality of the Greeks through the practical aim which she in 
her sanctity in works founded, and by means of which she 
raised up German individuality to the idealism of chivalry, 
i.e. a free military service in behalf of Christendom. 

§ 244. It is evident that the system of monkish education 
was taken up into this epoch as one of its elements, being 
modified to conform to it : e.g. the Benedictines were accus- 
tomed to labor in agriculture and in the transcribing of 
books, and this contradicted the idea of monachism, since 
that in and for itself tends to an absolute forgetfulness of the 
world and a perfect absence of all activity in the individual. 
The begging orders were public preachers, and made popu- 
lar the idea of love and unselfish devotion to others. They 
labored toward self-education, especially by means of the 
ideal of the life of Christ ; e.g. in Tauler's classical book on 
the Imitation of Jesus, and in the work of Thomas-a-Kempis 
which resembles it. Through a fixed contemplative com- 
munion with the conception of the Christ who suff'ered and 
died for Love, they sought to find content in divine rest and 
self-abandonment. 

§ 245. German chivalry sprang from Feudalism. The edu- 
cation of those pledged to military duty had become confined 
to practice in the use of arms. The education of the chivalric 
vassals pursued the same course, refining it gradually through 
the influence of court society and through poetry, which 
devoted itself either to the relating of graceful tales which 
were really works of art, or to the glorification of woman. 
Girls were brought up without especial care. The boy until 
he was seven years old remained in the hands of women ; 



134 Epocli of Cliiral r'tr hl«l n cation. 

then he became a lad (a young gentleman), and learned the 
manner of offensive and defensive warfare, on foot and on 
horseback ; between his sixteentli and eighteenth "year, 
through a formal ceremony (the hiyijjg on of the sword), he 
was duly authorized to bear arms. JUit whatever besides 
this he might wish to learn was left to his own caprice. 

§ 246. In contradistinction to the monkish education. Chi- 
valry placed an intinite value on individuality, and this it 
expressed in its extreme sensibility to the feeling of honor. 
Education, on this account, endeavored to foster this reflec- 
tion of the self upon itself by means of the social isolation 
in w-hicli it placed knighthood. The knight did not delight 
himself with common possessions, but he sought for him 
who had been wronged, since Avith liini he could find enjoy- 
ment as a conqueror. He did not live in simple marriage, 
but strove for the piquant ])leasure of making the wife of 
another the lady of his heart, and this often led to moral and 
physical infidelity. And, tinallv. the knight did not obey 
alone the general laws of knightly honor, but he strove, be- 
sides, to discover for himself strange things, which he should 
undertake with his sword, in defiance of all criticism, sim- 
ply because it pleased his caj)ii(e so to do. He souglit ad- 
tientures. 

§ 247. The reaction against tiie innumerable number of 
fantastic extravagancies arising from chivalry was the idea 
of the spiritual chivalry which was to unite the cloister and 
the town, abstract self-denial and military life, separation 
from the world and the sovereignty of the world — an unde- 
niable advance, but un untenable synthesis which could not 
prevent the dissolution of chivalry^ — this chivalry, which, as 
the rule of the stronger, induced for a long time the destruc- 
tion of all regular culture founded on ]»rinciples,and brought 
a period of absence of all education. In this perversion of 
chivalry to a grand vagabondisju. ajid even to robbery, noble 
souls often rushed into ridiculous excesses. This decline of 
chivalry found its truth in Citi/enship, whose education, how- 
ever, did not, like the tto/yc and the rinitas of the ancients, 
limit itself to itself, but, through the ])resence of the princi- 
ple of Christianity, accepted the Avhole circle of humanity as 
the aim of its culture. 



I 



Education for Civil Life — Ciml Education. 135 

III. T/'ic Epoch of Education fitting one for Civil Life. 

§ 248. The idea of the State had gradually worked itself 
up to a higher plane with trade and industry, and found in 
Protestantism its spiritual confirmation. Protestantism, as 
the self assurance of the individual that he was directly 
related to God without any dependence on the mediation of 
any man, rose to the truth in the autonomy of the soul, and 
began out of the abstract phantasmagoria of monachism and 
chivalry to develope Christianity, as the principle of humani- 
tarian education, into concrete actuality. The cities were 
not merely, in comparison with the clergy and the nobility, 
the "third estate"; but the. citizen who himself managed his 
commonwealth, and defended its interests with arms, devel- 
oped into the citizen of a state which absorbed the clergy and 
nobility, and the state-citizen found his ultimate ideal in pure 
Humanity as cognized through reason. 

§ 249. The phases of this development are (1) Civil edu- 
cation as such, in which we find chivalric education meta- 
morphosed into the so-called noble, both however being 
controlled as to education, within Catholicism by Jesuitism, 
within Protestantism by Pietism. (2) Against this tendency 
to the church, we find reacting on the one hand the devotion 
to a study of antiquity, and on the other the friendly alli- 
ance to immediate actuality, i.e. with Nature. We can 
name these periods of Pedagogics those of its ideals of 
culture. (3) But the truth of all culture must forever re- 
main moral freedom. After Education had arrived at a 
knowledge of the meaning of Idealism and Realism, it must 
seize as its absolute aim the moral emancipation of man 
into Humanity ; and it must conform its culture by this aim, 
since technical dexterity, friendly adroitness, proficiency in 
the arts, and scientific insight, can attain to their proper rank 
only through moral purity. 

1. Civil Education as such. 

§ 250. The one-sidedness of monkish and chivalric educa- 
tion was cancelled by civil education inasmuch as it de- 
stroyed the celibacy of the monk and the estrangement of 
the knight from his family, doing this by means of the inner 



136 Ciml Education. 

life of the family ; for it substituted, in the place of the nega- 
tive emptiness of the duty of holiness of the celibate, the 
positive morality of marriage and the family ; while, instead 
of the abstract poverty and the idleness of the monkish piety 
and of knighthood, it asserted that property was the object of 
labor, i.e. it asserted the self-governed morality of civil so- 
ciety and of commerce ; and, finally, instead of the servitude 
of the conscience in u in questioning obedience to the command 
of others, and instead of the freakish self-sufficiency of the 
caprice of the knights, it demanded obedience to the laws of 
the commonwealth as representing his own self-conscious, 
actualized, practical Reason, in which laws the individual 
can recognize and acknowledge himself. 

— As this civil education left free the sensuous enjoyment, 
freedom in this was without bounds for a time, until, after 
men became accustomed to labor and to their freedom of 
action, the possibility of enjoyment created from within out- 
ward a moderation which sumptuary laws and prohibitions 
of gluttony, drunkenness, &c., could never create from the 
external side. What the monk inconsistently enjoyed with 
a bad conscience, the citizen and the clergyman could 
take possession of as a gift of God. After the first millen- 
nium of Christianity, when the earth had not, according to 
the current prophecies, been destroyed, and after the great 
plague in the fourteenth century, there . was felt an im- 
mense pleasure in living, which manifested itself externally 
in the fifteenth century in delicate wines, dainty food, great 
eating of meat, drinking of beer, and, in the domain of dress, 
in peaked shoes, plumes, golden chains, bells, &c. There was 
much venison, but, as yet, no potatoes, tea and cofl'ee, &c. 
The feeling of men was quarrelsome. For a more exact 
painting of the Education of this time, very valuable au- 
thors are Sebastian Brant, Th. Murner, Ulrich von Hutten, 
Fischart, and Hans Sachs. Gervinus is almost the only one 
who has understood how to make this material useful in its 
relation to spirit. — 

§ 251. In contrast with the heaven-seeking of the monks 
and the sentimental love-making of the knight, civil educa- 
tion established, as its principle, Usefulness, which traced out 
in things their conformity to a proposed end in order to gain 



Civil Education. 137 

as great a mastery over them as possible. The understand- 
ing was trained with all exactness that it might clearly seize 
all the circumstances. But since family -life did not allow the 
egotism of the individual ever to become as great as was the 
case with the monk and the knight, and since the cheer of a 
sensuous enjoyment in cellar and kitchen, in clothing and 
furniture, in common games and in picturesque parades, 
penetrated the whole being with soft pleasure, there was de- 
veloped with all propriety and sobriety a house-morality, 
and, with all the prose of labor, a warm and kindly disj)osi- 
tion, which left room for innocent merriment and roguery, 
and found, in conformity to religious services, its serious 
transliguration. Beautiful burgher-state, thou wast weak- 
ened by the thirty years' war, and hast been only acciden- 
tally preserved sporadically in Old England and in some 
places in Germany, only to be at last swept away by the 
flood of modern world-pain, political sophistry, and anxiety 
for the future ! 

§ 252. The citizen paid special attention to public educa- 
tion, heretofore wholly dependent upon the church and the 
cloister ; he organized city schools, whose teachers, it is true, 
for a long time compassed only accidental culture, and were 
often employed only for tumultuous and short terms. The 
society of the brotherhood of the Hieronymites introduced a 
better system of: instruction before the close of the fourteenth 
century, but education had often to be obtained from the so- 
called travelling scholars {viagantes, haccliantes, scholastici, 
goliardi). The teachers of the so-called scliolcB exteriores^ 
in distinction from the schools of the cathedral and cloister, 
were called now locati, then stampuales — in German, Kinder- 
Meister. The institution of German schools soon followed 
the Latin city schools. In order to remove the anarchy in 
school matters, the citizens aided the rise of universities by 
donations and well-invested funds, and sustained the street- 
singing of the city scholars {ciirrende), an institution which 
was well-meant, but which often failed of its end because on 
the one hand it was often misused as a mere means of sub- 
sistence, and on the other hand the sense of honor of those 
to whom it was devoted not unfrequently became, through 
their manner of living, lowered to humiliation. The defect 



138 Chyil Education. 

of the monkisli method of instruction became ever more 
apparent, e.g. the silly tricks of their mnemotechnique, the 
utter lack of anything which deserved the name of any prac- 
tical knowledge, &c. The necessity of instruction in the use 
of arms led to democratic forms. Printing favored the same. 
Men began to concern themselves about good text-books. 
Melanchthon was the hero of the Protestant world, and as a 
pattern was beyond his time. His Dialectics, Rhetoric, Phys- 
ics, and Ethics, were reprinted innumerable times, comment- 
ed upon, and imitated. After him Amos Comenius, in the 
seventeenth century, had the greatest influence through his 
Didactica Magna and his Janua Reserta. In a narrower 
sphere, treating of the foundation of Gymnasial Philology, 
the most noticeable is Sturm of Strasburg. The universities 
in Catholic countries limited themselves to the Scholastic 
Philosophy and Theology, together with which we find 
slowly struggling up the Roman Law and the system of 
Medicine from Bologna and Salerno. But Protestantism first 
raised the university to any real universality. Tubingen, 
Konigsberg, "Wittenberg, Jena, Leipzic, Halle, Gottingen, 
&c., were the first schools for the study of all sciences, and 
for their free and productive pursuit. 

253. The Commons, which at first appeared with the clergy 
and the nobility as the Third Estate, formed an alliance with 
monarchy, and both together produced a transformation of 
the chivalric education. Absolutism reduced the knights to 
mere nobles, to whom it truly conceded the prerogative of 
appointment as spiritual prelates as well as officers and coun- 
sellors of state, but only on the condition of the most com- 
plete submission; and then, to satisfy them, it invented the 
artificial drinking festivals, of a splendid life at court, and a 
temptingly-impressive sovereignty of beauty. In this condi- 
tion, the education of the nobles was essentially changed in 
so far as to cease to be alone military. To the art of war, 
which moreover was made so very much milder by the inven- 
tion of fire-arms, must be now added an activit}^ of the mind 
which could no longer dispense with some knowledge of 
History, Heraldry, Genealogy, Literature, and Mythology. 
Since the French nation soon enough gave tone to the style 
of conversation, and after the time of Louis XIY. controlled 



Civil Education. 139 

the politics of the continent, the French language, as conven-. 
tional and diplomatic, became a constant element in the edu- 
cation of the nobility in all the other countries of Europe. 

— Practically the education of the noble endeavored to 
make the individual quite independent, so that he should, by 
means of tlie important quality of an advantageous personal 
appearance and the prudence of his agreeable behavior, 
make hi'iiself into a ruler of all other men, capable of enjoy- 
ing liis own position, i.e. he should copy in miniature the 
manners of an absolute sovereign. To this was added an 
empirical knowledge of men by means of ethical maxims, so 
that they might discover the weak side of every man, and 
so be able to outwit him. Mundus vult decip% ergo deci- 
'platur. According to this, every man had his price. They 
did not believe in the Nemesis of a divine destiny ; on the 
contrary, disbelief in the higher justice was taught. One 
must be so elastic; as to suit himself to all situations, and, 
as a caricature of the ancient ataraxy, he must acquire as a 
second nature a manner perfectly indiflerent to all changes, 
the impassibility of an aristocratic repose, the amphibious 
sang-froid of the " gentleman." The man in the world as the 
man of the world sought his ideal in endless dissimulation, 
and ill this, as the flowering of his culture, he took the high- 
est interest. Intrigue, in love as well as in politics, was the 
soul of the nobleman's existence. 

— They endeavored to complete the refinement of manners 
by sending the young man away with a travelling tutor. 
This was very good, but degenerated at last into the mechan- 
ism of the foolish travelling of the tourist. The noble was 
made a foreigner, a stranger to his own country, by means 
of his abode at Paris or Venice, while the citizen gradually 
outstripped him in genuine culture. 

§ 254. The education of the citizen as well as that of the 
noble was taken possession of, in Catholic countries by the 
Jesuits, in Protestant countries by the Pietists : by the first, 
with a military strictness; by the second, in asocial and 
effeminate form. Both, however, agreed in destroying indi- 
viduality, inasmuch as the one degraded man into a will-less 
machine for executing the commands of others, and the other 
deadened him in cultivating the feeling of his sinful worth- 
lessness. 



140 Jesuitic Education. 

(a) Jesuitic Edueatioji. 

§ 255. Jesuitism combined the maximum of worldly free- 
dom with an appearance of the greatest piety. Proceeding 
from this stand-point, it devoted itself in education to ele- 
gance and showy knowledge, to diplomacy and what was 
suitable and convenient in morals. To bring the future more 
into its power, it adapted itself not only to youth in general, 
but especially to the youth of the nobler classes. To please 
these, the Jesuits laid great stress upon a tine deportment. 
In their colleges dancing and fencing were well-taught. They 
knew how well they should by this course content the noble, 
who had by preference usurped the name of Education for 
this technical way of giving formal expression to personality. 

— In instruction they developed so exact a mechanism that 
they gained the reputation of having model school regula- 
tions, and even Protestants sent their children to them. From 
the close of the sixteenth century to the present time they 
have based their teaching upon the ratio et institutio Stu- 
diorum Societatis Jesii of Claudius Aquaviva, and, following 
that, they distinguish two courses of teaching, a higher and 
a lower. The lower included nothing but an external knowl- 
edge of the Latin language, and some fortuitous knowledge 
of History, of Antiquities, and of Mythology. The memory 
was cultivated as a means of keeping down free activity of 
thought and clearness of judgment. The higher course com- 
prehended Dialectics, Rhetoric, Physics, and Morals. Dia- 
lectics appeared in the form of Sophistry. In Rhetoric, they 
favored the polemical-emphatic style of the African fathers 
of the Church and their pompous phraseology ; in Physics, 
they stopped with Aristotle, and especially advised the read- 
ing of the books De Generatione et Corrupt lone, and De 
Coelo, on which they commented after their fashion ; tinally, 
in Morals casuistic skepticism was their central point. They 
made much of Rhetoric on account of their sermons, giving 
to it much attention, and introduced especially Declamation. 
Contriving showy public examinations under the guise of 
Latin School Comedies, they thus amused the public, dis- 
posed them to approval, and at the same time quite inno- 
cently practised the pupil in dissimulation. 

— Diplomacy in behavior was made necessary to the Jesuits 
as well by their strict military discipline as by their system 



Pietistic Education. 141 

of reciprocal mistrust, espionage, and informing. Abstract 
obedience was a reason for any act of the pupils, and they 
were freed from all responsibility as to its moral justifica- 
tion. This empirical exact following out of all commands, 
and refraining from any criticism as to principles, created a 
moral indifference, and, from the necessity of having consid- 
eration for the peculiarities and caprices of the superior on 
whom all others were dependent, arose eye-service, and the 
coldness of isolation sprang from the necessity which each 
felt of being on his guard against every other as against a 
tale-bearer. The most deliberate hypocrisy and pleasure in 
intrigue merely for the sake of intrigue — this most refined 
poison of moral corruption — were the result. Jesuitism had 
not only an interest in the material profit, which, when it 
had corrupted souls, fell to its share, but it also had an inter- 
est in the process of corruption. With absolute indiff"erence 
as to the idea of morality, and absolute indiff'erence as to the 
moral quality of the means used to attain its end, it rejoiced 
in the superiority of secrecy, of the accomplished and cal- 
culating understanding, and in deceiving the credulous by 
means of its graceful, seemingly-perfect, moral language. 

— It is not necessary to speak here of the morality of the 
Order. It is sufficiently recognized as the contradiction, that 
the idea of morality insists upon the eternal necessity of 
every deed, but that in the realizing of the action all deter- 
minations should be made relative and should vary with the 
circumstances. As to discipline, they were always guided 
by their fundamental principle, that body and soul, as in and 
for themselves one, could vicariously suffer for each other. 
Thus penitence and contrition were transformed into a 
perfect materialism of outward actions, and hence arose the 
punishments of the Order, in which fasting, scourging, im- 
prisonment, mortification, and death, were formed into a 
mechanical artificial system. 

(h) Pietistic Education. 

§ 256. Jesuitism would make machines of man, Pietism 
would dissolve him in the feeling of his sinfulness : either 
would destroy his individuality. Pietism proceeded from 
the principle of Protestantism, as, in the place of the Catholic 
Pelagianism with its sanctification by works, it offered justi- 



142 Pietistic Education. 

cation by faith alone. In its tendency to internality was its 
jnst claim. It would have even the letters of the Bible trans- 
lated into the vivacity of sentiment. But in its execution it 
fell into the error of one-sidedness in that it placed, instead 
of the actuality of the spirit and its freedom, the confusion of 
a limited personality, placing in its stead the personality of 
Christ in an external manner, and thus brought back into the 
very midst of Protestantism the principle of monachism — an 
abstract renunciation of the world. Since Protestantism has 
destroyed the idea of the cloister, it could produce estrange- 
ment from the world only by exciting public opinion against 
snch elements of society and culture which it stigmatized as 
tooi^ldly for its members, e.g. card-playing, dancing, the thea- 
tre, &c. Thus it became negatively dependent upon works ; 
for since its followers remained in reciprocal action with the 
world, so that the temptation to backsliding was a perma- 
nent one, it must watch over them, exercise an indispensable 
moral-police control over them, and thus, by the suspicion of 
each other which was involved, take up into itself tlie Jesuit- 
ical practice, although in a very mild and affectionate way. 
Instead of the forbidden secrecy of the cloister, it organized 
a separate company, which we, in its regularly constituted 
assembly, call a conventicle. Instead of the cowl, it put on 
its youth a dress like that of the world, but scant and ashen- 
colored; it substituted for the tonsure closely-cut hair and 
shaven beard, and it often went beyond the obedience of 
the monks in its expression of pining humility and prud- 
ish composure. Education within such a circle could not 
Tvell recognize nature and history as manifestations of God, 
but it must consider them to be limitations to their union 
with God, from which death can first then completely release 
them. The soul which knew that its home could be found 
only in the future world, must feel itself to be a stranger 
upon the earth, and from such an opinion there must arise 
an indifference and even a contempt for science and art, as 
well as an aversion for a life of active labor, though an un- 
willing and forced tribute might be paid to it. Philosophy 
especially was to be shunned as dangerous. Bible lectures, 
the catechism and the hymn-book, were the one thing need- 
ful to the "poor in spirit." Religious poetry and music were, 
of all the arts, the only ones deserving of any cultivation. The 



Tlie Ideal of Culture — Tlie Humanitarian Ideal. 143 

education of Pietism endeavored, by means of a carefully- 
arranged series of representations, to create in its disciples 
the feeling of their absolute nothingness, vileness, godless- 
ness, and abandonment by God, in order to displace the tor- 
ment of despair as to themselves and the world by a warm, 
dramatic, and living relation to Christ — a relation in which 
all the Eroticism of the mystical passion of the begging- friars 
was renewed in a somewhat milder form and with a strong 
tendency to a sentimental sweetishness. 

2. The Ideal of Culture. 

§ 257. Civil Education arose from the recognition of mar- 
riage and the family, of labor and enjoyment, of the equality 
of all before the Law, and of the duty of self-determination. 
Jesuitism in the Catholic world and Pietism in the Protestant 
were the reaction against this recognition — a return into the 
abstract asceticism of the middle ages, not however in its 
purity, but mixed with some regard for worldly possessions. 
In opposition to this- reaction the commonwealth produced 
another, in which it undertook to deliver individuality by 
means of a reversed alienation. On the one hand, it absorbed 
itself in the conception of the Greek-Roman world. In the 
practical interests of the present, it externalized man in a 
past which held to the present no immediate relation, or it 
externalized him in the affairs which were to serve him as 
means of his comfort and enjoyment; it created an abstract 
idealism — a reproduction of the old view of the world — or an 
abstract Realism in a high appreciation of things which 
should be considered of value only as a means. In one direc- 
tion. Individuality proceeded towards a dead nationality ; in 
the other, towards an unlimited world-commonwealth. In 
one case, the ideal was the aesthetic republicanism of the 
Greeks ; in the other, the utilitarian cosmopolitanism of the 
Romans. But, in considering the given circumstances, both 
united in the feeling of humanity, with its reconciliatory and 
pitying gentleness toward the beggar or the criminal. 

(a) The Hurnanitariayi Ideal. 

§ 258. The Oriental-theocratic education is immanent in 
Christian education through the Bible. Through the media- 
tion of the Greek and Roman churches the views of the an- 



144 The Pliilantliropic Ideal. 

cient world were subsumed but not entirely subdued. To 
accomplish this was the problem of humanitarian educa- 
tion. It aimed to teach the Latin and Greek languages, 
expecting thus to secure the action of a purely humane dis- 
position. The Greeks and Romans being sharply marked 
nationalities, how could one cherish such expectations ? It 
was possible only relatively in contradiction, partly to a pro- 
vincial population from whom all genuine political sense had 
departed, partly to a church limited by a confessional, to 
which the idea of humanity as such had become almost lost 
in dogmatic fault-findings. The spirit was refreshed in the 
first by the contemplation of the pure patriotism of the an- 
cients, and in the second by the discovery of Reason among 
the heathen. In contrast to formlessness distracted by the 
want of all ideal of culture of provincialism and dogmatic 
confusions, we find the power of representation of ancient 
art. The so-called uselessness of learning dead languages 
imparted to the mind, it knew not how, an ideal drift. The 
very fact that it could not find immediate profit in its knowl- 
edge gave it the consciousness of a higher value than mate- 
rial profit. The ideal of the Humanities was the truth to 
Nature which was found in the thought-painters of the an- 
cient world. The study of language merely with regard to 
its form, must lead one involuntarily to the actual seizing of 
its content. The Latin schools were fashioned into Gymna- 
sia, and the universities contained not merely professors of 
Eloquence, but also teachers of Philology. 

(b) The Philanthropic Ideal. 

§ 259. The humanitarian tendency reached its extreme in 
the abstract forgetting of the present, and the omitting to 
notice its just claim. Man discovered at last that he was not 
at home with himself in Rome and Athens. He spoke and 
wrote Latin, if not like Cicero, at least like Muretius, but he 
often found himself awkward in expressing his meaning in 
his mother-tongue. He was often very learned, but he lacked 
judgment. He was filled with enthusiasm for the republi- 
canism of Greece and Rome, and yet at the same time was 
himself exceedingly servile to his excellent and august lords. 
Against this gradual deadening of active individuality, the 
result of a perverted study of the classics, we find now react- 



The PTdlantliToplc Ideal. 145 

ing tlie education of enlightenment, which we generally call 
the philanthropic. It sought to make men friendly to the 
immediate course of the world. It placed over against the 
learning of the ancient languages for their own sake, the 
acquisition of the more needful branches of Mathematics, 
Physics, Greography, History, and the modern languages, 
calling these the real studies. Nevertheless it often retained 
the instruction in the Latiu language because the Romance 
languages have sprung from it, aud because, through its long 
domination, the universal terminology of Science, Art, and 
Law, is rooted in it. Phihmthropy desired to develope the 
social side of its disciple through an abstract of practical 
knowledge and personal accomplishments, and to lead him 
again, in opposition to the hermit-like sedentary life of the 
book-pedant, out into the fields and the woods. It desired 
to imitate life even in its method, and to instruct pleasantly 
in the way of play or by dialogue. It would add to the sim- 
ple letters and names the contemplation of the object itself, 
or at least of its representation by pictures ; and in this di- 
rection, in the conversation-literature which it prepared for 
children, it sometimes fell into childishness. It performed 
a great service when it gave to the body its due, ancf intro- 
duced simple, natural dress, bathing, gymnastics, pedestrian 
excursions, and a hardening against the influences of wind and 
weather. As this Pedagogics, so friendly to children, deemed 
that it could not soon enough begin to honor them as citizens 
of the world, it was guilty in general of the error of presup- 
posing as already finished in its children much that it itself 
should have gradually developed; and as it wished to edu- 
cate the European as such, or rather man as such, it came 
into an indifference concerning the concrete distinctions of 
nationality and religion. It coincided with the philologists 
in placing, in a concealed way, Socrates above Christ, be- 
cause he had worked no miracles, and taught only mor/ility. 
In such a dead cosmopolitanism, individuality disappeared 
in the indeterminateness of a general humanity, and saw 
itself forced to agree with the humanistic education in pro- 
claiming the truth of Nature as the pedagogical ideal, with 
the distinction, that while Humanism believed this ideal real- 
ized in the Greeks and Romans, Philanthropism found itself 



146 Tlie Philanthropic Ideal. 

compelled to presuppose an abstract notion, and often mani- 
fested a not unjustifiable pleasure in recoc^nizing in the Indi- 
ans of North America, or of Otaheite, the genuine man of 
nature. Philosophy first raised these conceptions to the idea 
of the State, which fashioned the cognition of Reason and of 
the reform which follows from its idea, into an organic ele- 
ment in itself, 

— The course which the developing of the philanthropic 
ideal has taken is as follows : (1) Rousseau in his writings, 
Emile and the Non'oelle Heloise, first preached the evangel 
of I^atural Education, the abstraction from History, the nega- 
tion of existing culture, and the return to the simplicity and 
innocence of nature. Although he often himself testified in 
his experience his own proneness to evil in a very discourag- 
ing way, he fixed as an almost unlimited axiom in French 
and German Pedagogics his principal maxim, that man is by 
nature good. (2) The reformatory ideas of Rousseau met 
with only a very infrequent and sporadic introduction among 
the Romanic nations, because among them education was 
too dependent on the church, and retained its cloister- like 
seclusion in seminaries, colleges, &c. In Germany, on the 
the contrary, it was actualized, and the Philanthropia, esta- 
blished by Basedow in Dessau, Brunswick, and Schnepfen- 
thal, made experiments, which nevertheless very soon de- 
parted somewhat from the ultraism of Basedow and had very 
excellent results. (3) Humanity existed in concreto only in 
the form of nations. The French nation, in their revolution, 
tried the experiment of abstracting from their history, of lev- 
elling all distinctions of culture, of enthroning a despotism 
of Reason, and of organizing itself as humanity, pure and 
simple. The event showed the impossibility of such a be- 
ginning. The national energy, the historical impulse, the 
love of art and science, came forth from the midst of the revo- 
lutionary abstraction, which was opposed to them, only the 
more vigorously. The grande nation^ their grande armee, 
and gloire — that is to say, for France — absorbed all the 
humanitarian phases. In Germany the philanthropic circle 
of education was limited to the higher ranks. There was no 
exclusiveness in the Philanthropia, for there nobles and citi- 
zens, Catholics and Protestants, Russians and Swiss, were 
mingled ; but these were always the children of wealthy 



Tlie PhilantTiTopiG Ideal. 147 

families, and to these the plan of education was adapted. 
Then appeared Pestalozzi and directed education also to the 
lower classes of society — those which are called, not without 
something approaching to a derogatory meaning, the people. 
From this time dates popular education, the effort for the 
intellectual and moral elevation of the hitherto neglected 
atomistic human being of the non-property-holding multi- 
tude. There shall in future be no dirty, hungry, ignorant, 
awkward, thankless, and will-less mass, devoted alone to an 
animal existence. We can never rid ourselves of the lower 
classes by having the wealthy give something, or even their 
all, to the poor, so as to have no property themselves ; but 
we can rid ourselves of it in the sense that the possibility of 
culture and independent self-support shall be open to every 
one, because he is a human being and a citizen of the com- 
monwealth. Ignorance and rudeness and the vice which 
springs from them, and the malevolent frame of mind against 
the human race, which are bound up with crime — these shall 
disappear. Education shall train man to self-conscious obe- 
dience to law, as well as to kindly feeling towards the err- 
ing, and to an effort not merely for their removal but for their 
improvement. But the more Pestalozzi endeavored to realize 
his ideal of human dignit}^, the more he comprehended that 
the isolated power of a private man could not attain it, but 
that the nation itself must make their own education their 
first business. • Fichte by his lectures first made the German 
nation fully accept these thoughts, and Prussia was the first 
state which, by her public schools and her conscious prepa- 
ration for defence, broke the path for National Education ; 
while amon^ the Romanic nations, in spite of their more 
elaborate political formalism, it still depends partly upon 
the church and partly upon the accident of private enter- 
prise. Pestalozzi also laid a foundation for a national peda- 
gogical literattire by his story of Leonard and Gertrude. 
This book appeared at first in 1784, i.e. in the' same year in 
which Schiller's Itohhers and Kant's Critique of Pure Beason 
announced a new phase in the Drama and in Philosophy. 

— The incarnation of God, which was, up to the time of the 
Reformation, an esoteric mystery of the Church, has since 
then become continually more and more an exoteric problem 
of the State. — 




148 Free Education. 

019 792 512 

S. Free EducaHon. 

§ 260. The ideal of culture of the humanitarian and the 
philanthropic education was taken up into the conception of 
an education which recognizes the Family, social caste, the 
Nation, and Religion, as positive elements of the practical 
spirit, but which will know each of these as determined from 
within through the idea of humanity, and laid open for recip- 
rocal dialectic with the rest. Physical development shall be- 
come the subject of a national system of gymnastics fashioned 
for use, and including in itself the knowledge of the use of 
arms. Instruction shall, in respect to the general encyclopfe- 
die culture, be the same for all, and parallel to this shall run 
a system of special schools to prepare for the special avoca- 
tions of life. The method of instruction shall be the simple 
representation of the special idea of the subject, and no 
longer the formal breadth of an acquaintance with many 
subjects which may find outside the school its opportunity, 
but within it has no meaning except as the history of a sci- 
ence or an art. Moral culture must be combined with family 
affection and the knowledge of the laws of the commonwealth, 
so that the dissension between individual morality and 
objective legality may ever more and more disappear. Edu- 
cation shall, without estranging the individual from the inter- 
nality of the family, accustom him more and more to public 
life, because criticism of this is the only thing which can 
prevent the cynicism of private life, the half-ness of knowl- 
edge and will, and the spirit of caste, which has so exten- 
sively prevailed. The individual shall be educated into a 
self-consciousness of the essential equality and freedom of 
all men, so that he shall recognize and acknowledge himself 
in each one and in all. But this essential and solid unity of 
all men shall not evaporate into the insipidity of a humanity 
without distinctions, but instead it shall realize the form of 
a determinate individuality and nationality, and shall en- 
lighten the idiosyncrasy of its nation into a broad humanity. 
The unrestricted striving after Beauty, Truth, and Freedom, 
actually through its own strength and immediately, not 
merely mediately through ecclesiastical consecration, will 
become Religion. 

The Education of the State must rise to a preparation for 
the unfettered activity of self-conscious Humanity. 



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CONTENTS OF THE FIFTH VOLUME 




I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 
VII. 

vni. 

IX. 
X. 

XI, 



Contents of No. 1. 

The Concrete and the Abstract. 

Remarkable Cases of Memory. 

Kant's Ethics. 

Analysis of an Article on Hegel. 

The Spiritual Principle in Mor- 
als. 

Facts of Consciousness. 

Heo:el on the Philosophy of Aris- 
totle. 

The Venus of Milo. 

The Philosophy of Mathematics. 

Theism and Pantlieism. 

Speculative Philosophy in Italy. 



Contents of No. 2. 

I. Introduction to the Meditations of 
Descartes. 

n. Kant's Ethics— Ethico-Active Rea- 
son. 

ni. Leibnitz on the Doctrine of a Uni- 
versal Spirit. 

rV. Fichte's Facts of Consciousness. 
V. The Departments of Mathematics, 
and their Mutual Relations. 

VI. Hegel on Aristotle's Metaphysics. 



Contents of No.'i. 
Thoughts on Philosoplw and its 

Method. 
New System of Nature by Leib- 
nitz. 
Goethe's Story of the Snake.. 
Fichte's Facts of Consciousness. 
V. Restoration of the Venus of Melos. 
VI. Introduction to Hegel's EncyclO"* 
paedia. 

VII. Hegjel on Aristotle's Philosophy 

of Nature. 

VIII. The Philosophy of Nature. 
IX. Philosophy in Europe. 



I. 

II. 

III. 
IV. 



Contents op No. 4, 
I. Kant's Ethics. 

II. Thoughts on Logic and Dialectic. 
ni. Review of Hartmann on the Dia- 
lectic. 
rV. Fichte's Pacts of Consciousness. 
V. Trendelenburg on Hegel 's^y&^ 

tem. . 
VI. Bion's Ode on the Death of ASo- 

nis. 
VII. Hegel's Philosophy of Art — 

(^hivalrv. 
VIII. The Quarrel 
IX. Philosophy in Europe. 
X. Book Notices. 



CONTENTS OF THE SIXTH VOLUME, 



Contents OF No. 1. 
I. The Metaphysical Calculus. 
II. JjOtze on the Ideal and Real. 

III. The Trinity and ,the Double Pro- 

ces-^ion. . j 

IV. Fichte's Fact#of':Consciousness. 
V. Rosenkranz oh Hegel's Phenome- 
nology. 

VI. Trendelenburg on Hegel's Svstem. 

VII. Book Notices— Hugo Deltf;' Vera; 

Channing ; Uebervfeg. 



.^ Contents of No. 2. 
cli Rosenkranz on Hegel's Logic. 
II. Fichte's Facts of Consciousness. 
III. Hegel's Philosopliy of Art: Chiv- 
alry — Honor. 
Shakespeare's Merchant of Ven- 
ice. 
A System of Empirical Certitude. 
E. V. Hartmann ''On the Dialec- 
tic Method." 
VII. Trendelenburg on Hegel's Sys- 
tem . 
Correspondence : Dr.Rosenkranz 
and Dr. HoflFmann; Dr. Miche- 
letand Dr. Hartmann; Dr. Stir- 
ling and Dr. Vera. 
Difference between the Dialectic 
. and Synthetic Methods. 
X. Book Notices. 

I^^Subscription $2 a volume. 



IV. 

V. 
VI 



VIH 



IX. 



Contents of No. 3. 

I. Is Positive Science Nominj/lism 
or Realism? 
n. Theories of Mental Gene si;(^. 
III. Anti-Materiahsm. 
JV. Interpretation of Kanrs Kritik 
->-i^ of Pure Reason. y 

V. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. 
VI, Hegel's Philosophy of Art: Chiv- 
alry — Love. 
Vll.^osenkranz^n Hegel's Philoso- 



>kff of Right. 
The^ft-K 



VIIL The i^ftj^nides ofPlato. 
IX. Book Noti^b*, , = 



CONTENTS ^F No. 4. 



■X- 



III. 

IV. 
V. 

VI. 
VII. 

VIIL 



I. Do the Correlationists Believe in 

Self-Mov^ent? 
II. Pedagogics as a System 



The Philo'sophy of Law. 

Fichte's Facts of Consciousness. 

Trendelenburg on Hegel's Sys- 
tem. 

The JVferchant of Venice. 

Rosenkranz on Hegel's Philoso- 
phy of History. 

Book Notices, c 



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